Optimism, and other sermons

fjVI'AINSHa.CO

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

OPTIMISM

and Other Sermons

BY

ROBERT LAW, D.D.

Author of "The Grand Adventure." "The Tests of Life."

"The Emotions of Jesus." "The Hope of

Our Calling." Etc., Etc.

MCCLELLAND & STEWART

PUBLISHERS - - TORONTO

COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1919
BY MCCLELLAND & STEWART, LIMITED, TORONTO

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cl I 7 f

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105218?

PRINTED IN CANADA

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE REV. ROBERT LAW, D.D. : AN

APPRECIATION .... 9

I. OPTIMISM 17

II. THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARD

WRONG 35

III. THE POWER OF SYMPATHY ... 57

IV. THE STORY OF A TOUCH .... 69
V. STRENGTH FOR THE DAY .... 83

VI. THE CHRISTIAN RACE — How TO RUN IT 95

VII. LIFE BUILDING ...... 109

VIII. RECONSTRUCTION 123

IX. THE LADDER FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN . 135
X. CHRIST'S ABSENCE FROM THE BODY THE
CONDITION OF His FULL SPIRITUAL

PRESENCE 147

XI. MORAL WEAKNESS CONFRONTED WITH

THE FORCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES . . 157

XII. THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY . . .171

XIII. OUT OF WEAKNESS MADE STRONG . 191

\

PREFACE

IT is in response to a widespread public desire
*for at least another volume of sermons by the
late Professor Law, that this book is put forth.
Of the sermons published in "The Grand Ad
venture/' Dr. Law says — "All of them are pub
lished practically as they were preached, no
attempt having been made to modify the style,
which, as I am aware, is better adapted to the
pulpit than to the printed page." For the ser
mons and addresses in this volume, the same
admission must be made. They are printed as
they were delivered.

A note has been added to some of the sermons
giving the circumstances under which they were
preached. In the case of the addresses, this has
not been possible, there being no indication on
the manuscript, of the special purpose for which
they were prepared.

T. B. MCCORKINDALE,
EDITOR.

Deseronto, 1919.

THE REV. ROBERT LAW, D.D.:
AN APPRECIATION

BY REV. T. B. MCCORKINDALE, M. A.

WISH to pay a tribute to the memory of my
friend, the late Professor Law, of Knox Col
lege, Toronto, of whose services not only the
Church, but the whole Dominion of Canada,
was suddenly and unexpectedly bereft. To our
sorrow and loss, he was taken away in the very
zenith of his powers, at a time when it seemed
to us we never more greatly needed his prophetic
voice and his guiding hand. But, I think, he
died as he would have wished to die, in the very
midst of his work, ere his eye was dim, or his
natural force abated.

It was my good fortune to hear the last
sermon he ever preached. Little did I think, as
I watched from my seat in Old St. Andrew's
that virile, clear-cut face, instinct with life, and
mobile with the play of thought and emotion-
little did I think, as I listened to his fervid words,
and wondered at the splendid workmanship of
his discourse, truly the work of a master hand,
that I would never again see in life those ex-

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

pressive features, or listen to that eloquence
which was the admiration and, in a sense, the
envy of every preacher.

On the next Lord's Day he was seized, one
might say, on the very steps of the pulpit, with
almost his first and what proved to be his last
illness. Within eight days thereafter he passed
to where beyond these voices there is peace.

First, let us consider him as a scholar. It is
natural to do so, for in his erudition, which was
far wider than most men dreamed, we find one
of the secrets of his power as a preacher. While
it is true that not every great scholar is a great
preacher, it is also true that no one can be a great
preacher without the gift of scholarship. This
gift Dr. Law possessed in full measure. From
his boyhood he was devoted to learning. He
was not only a "lad o' pairts," to use a phrase of
his own country, but an earnest student, graduat
ing as Dux and Gold Medalist from one of the
great public schools of Edinburgh, that city of
splendid schools, and entering the Metropolitan
University at an age when many a boy is strug
gling with the preliminary subjects. Equal dili
gence and success crowned his work at the larger
home of learning. He took a most distinguished
place at all his classes, in due time graduating
M.A., and, in a few years thereafter, B.D., and
this at a time when the latter degree was not so

10

THE REV. ROBERT LAW, D.D.

much sought after as it is now. He completed
his theological studies by a course at the famous
University of Tubingen, which gave its name to
a method of Biblical Criticism now exploded.
But in the truest sense of the word, his theologi
cal studies were never completed. In his first
Charge, to which he was ordained at the early age
of twenty-four, he gave one day a week to the
study of Latin, another to Hebrew, and a third
to Greek, which by degrees took the first place in
his affections. All his life he was a member of
a Greek Club. In his charge in Edinburgh
which demanded much parochial visitation, he
would come home at night, not wearied as most
men would be, not with nerves jangling and out
of tune as would be the lot of nearly all, but with
an appetite whetted for his Greek play or his
beloved Plato. Indeed, reading Plato with a
few kindred souls was almost the only recreation
he took during his strenuous years in Toronto.
His knowledge of the Greek Testament was pro
found. One could scarcely ever quote a passage,
without hearing an echo of the original mur
mured by him as he ruminated over the point in
discussion. I have heard a report which I can
well believe, that a student of Knox, taking Post
graduate work elsewhere, confessed he never
knew how great a teacher Law was, until he sat
at the feet of another. His eminence as an Exe-

11

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

gete was acknowledged by his Church in the Old
Country when it appointed him Kerr Lecturer
in 1909. His subject on this foundation was
"The Tests of Life — a study in the first Epistle
of St. John," which all scholars at once recogni
zed as a work of rare expository value. His
Alma Mater, always chary in the bestowal of her
honorary degrees, shortly thereafter honoured
him and herself by conferring on him the degree
of Doctor of Divinity.

In referring to his scholarship, I have sought
to show that he was not only gifted, but laborious.
All his life he was a worker, and a hard worker.
Every sermon bore evidence of high thinking
and hard work. He ever gave of his best and
nothing but his best, so that, as he closed one
ministry after another in Scotland, his people
would testify, that they never heard from him a
poor sermon — a rare verdict, surely! Nor did
he ever work harder than during these years he
gave to the Church in Canada. They were, in
deed, ten years of crowded life. Would that
they had been less crowded — that he had occa
sionally relaxed — that, as in earlier days, the
curling rink, or the golf course, or the bicycle
had lured him from his study. He might have
been spared to this new era that so greatly needs
the prophetic insight, and the well grounded
optimism of such as he.

12

THE REV. ROBERT LAW, D.D.

His pre-eminence as a preacher was ac
knowledged by every candid soul amongst his
brethren. A minister of our Church in Toronto,
with a magnanimity which only a great-hearted
man could exhibit, confessed in Old St. An
drew's Church on the day of Professor Law's
funeral, that his preaching was a revelation not
only to the people of Toronto, but also to the
ministry, inasmuch as it revealed the power the
pulpit might become, when filled with such men
as Dr. Law. Like most Scottish ministers, he
took the work of preaching seriously, and the
message of the Bible seriously, and the needs of
his congregation and of the times, seriously. He
was pre-eminently an expository preacher with a
singular gift of applying Scripture to the needs
of the hour. Again and again his sermons begin
with a clear, and lucidly expressed exposition of
his text and the contents. From this there be
gins the triumphal march of his discourse, gath
ering momentum as it moves majestically on; or,
rather, let us say, on this foundation there arises
a beautiful, chaste, and often magnificent struc
ture, the work of an artist and architect, as well
as a prophet. For indeed he was a prophet — a
man of God — to us the beautiful name given to
some of the holy men of old, a man who believed
in God, lived near to God, who listened for the
voice of God, who waited on the Spirit's prompt-

13

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

ing, who, to use an expressive phrase of one of
the greatest of the teachers of Israel, was one of
those admitted to the "council chamber" of the
Almighty. Here, without a doubt, we find the
true secret of his greatness as a preacher — his un-
doubting conviction that God is, that "there is a
hand that guides," and a loving hand, the
Father's hand — that not a sparrow shall fall to
the ground without our Father — the theme of
one of his greatest sermons. And, with the in
sight of the old prophets, he had their passion
for righteousness, and their belief in the triumph
of righteousness, even though at the long last. A
faith and insight and passion like his, did not
require the meretricious aids of fancy texts and
fancy subjects — the refuge, too often, of the dis
tressed seeker after popularity.

A prophet — he was also an Apostle of Christ.
No man I ever knew had a greater love for our
blessed Lord. His sermons reveal that. He is
never greater than when dealing with some
great and gracious word or work of the Saviour
of men. Then he rises to the heights of his most
moving and most fervid eloquence. The theme
seems to kindle his emotions, and his whole style
glows with the fervour of a great devotion.
Above all, his life revealed it. It was revealed
in his unnumbered acts of kindness and charity,
of which even his own family was ignorant. He

14

THE REV. ROBERT LAW, D.D.

was not the man to speak of them, or let his right
hand know what his left hand did. It was re
vealed in his life — in that quiet, dinified life of
unostentatious goodness by which he adorned his
Christian profession.

Some of his qualities as a man were, of
course, patent to all who knew him as a preacher,
teacher, and citizen — his integrity and rectitude,
his high courage, industry, indomitableness.
These are often found apart from the more gen
ial qualities. But not in his case. He was an all-
round man. We may say of him what a Latin
poet said of himself, that nothing that concerns
mankind was a matter of indifference to him.
He could speak to any man on any subject that
interested that man most. In his younger days
he might have been often seen on the curling
rink when the conditions were favourable, or on
the golf course, or on his bicycle. He did not
take his pleasure sadly, he enjoyed God's world.
He enjoyed the company of his fellowmen. He
enjoyed to hear, and also to tell a good story.

One of his indoor recreations was music—
especially Church music. In his early days he
acted as precentor in the Church, cultivating a
refined taste for music among the members of the
choir. In his later days he taught a singing
class in Knox. Our new Book of Praise owes
much to his talent, and taste, and wide knowl-

15

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

edge, both of hymns and Church-song. While
he had a part in the ministry of Old St. An
drew's, it was one of the too few Churches in
Canada where the music was of a distinctively
Churchly type.

"Law was a great man," said one of his life
long friends to me — "Law was a great man." It
was a short, simple, yet coming from the source
it did, a significant biography. Like all truly
great men, he was a man utterly without vanity.
He bore without abuse the grand old name of
gentleman. He carried his load of learning
lightly, and it was only in intimate concourse
one could get a glimpse of his vast erudition.
He was quite fearless in his public speech,—
never courting popularity. If it came to him, it
was well : if it did not, it mattered not. His per
sonal religion, as has been said, was quiet and
unostentatious. Anything bordering on the sanc
timonious was an abhorrence to him. Speaking
little about religion, his life adorned the doc
trine he professed. With a high sense of duty he
was zealous in fulfilling it. He lived as ever in
the Great Taskmaster's sight. It was his ambi
tion, to use the words of one of his own texts, to
please Christ his Saviour and to merit the words,
"Well done, good and faithful servant."

DESERONTO, ONT.,
1919.

16

I.

OPTIMISM

T^HE subject on which I have thought it
appropriate to address you is Optimism; for,
though to speak on such a theme in Western
Canada may look like carrying coals to New
castle, the character of the times that are passing
over us demands all the optimism it is possible
for any of us to possess. In the first sense of the
word, optimism is a natural quality, a disposition
one is born with or without, as the case may be, a
tendency to look on the bright side, to take a
favorable view of circumstances and prospects.
It is what is otherwise called the sanguine tem
perament; and this name at once suggests the
close interdependence of body and mind in the
make-up of our nature. A full tide of clean,
healthy blood, circulating vigorously in body
and brain and somehow irrigating the roots of
thought and feeling, is the physical counterpart
of this temperament. And, therefore, it is char
acteristically the gift of youth. Youth and
health can scarcely be other than optimistic.
Thank God for it! It is the rich warm blood

An address delivered at the Annual Convocation of the
University of Manitoba, May 10th, 1918.

17
2

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

pulsing in the veins of our young men and
women that keeps this otherwise old and
withered world young, full of hope and joy; and
secures that, as one generation of us is growing
grey-haired and conservative, stiffened in our
thoughts and ways, another is always rising up
with fresh dreams and impulses, filled with a
new wine of the spirit. Well that it is so! If
life began with "Vanity of vanities" as its watch
word, its current would be frozen at the source;
if even with the chastened sagacity of age, it
would come near to stagnation.

No matter that much of illusion is mingled
with the optimism of youth ; illusion has its place
in the education of life. No matter that in many
an instance Hope tells a flattering tale; whether
real or illusory, it is Hope that keeps the world
moving. No matter though life never turns out
what any of us expects, but something better or
worse, at any rate something different; were it
not for the expectations we should never live at
all. Even the little we accomplish we should
never have accomplished but for the hopes that
proved too great for accomplishment. If neces
sity is the mother of invention, optimism is the
father of enterprise. Optimists are the advance-
guard of all the great armies, of religion and
philanthropy, science and civilization.

Yet this happy, courageous, generous tem-
18

OPTIMISM

perament is not without its defects and dangers.
There is no temperament, indeed, on which our
common speech showers so many disapproving
epithets. Blind optimism, we speak of; and
shallow optimism, cheap optimism, facile, cre
dulous, unthinking optimism. And each of
these epithets is a beaconlight warning the
optimist of the rocks and shoals on which he is
apt to make shipwreck. The radical vice of the
optimist is to ignore. He reviews with pride
his ten thousand men, but he ignores the enemy's
twenty thousand. He does not reckon ade
quately with the stubborn, intractable nature of
the material on which human effort has to spend
itself. So the optimist is apt to be fickle and
inconstant. He does not relish collar-work, the
long pull and the strong pull. He pictures the
path of his choice as one to be travelled easily,
swiftly and pleasantly; and at the first taste of
disappointment, the first hint of a lion in the
way, his optimistic imagination flies off to
another as promising more of the desired
qualities. In business, the victim of this tem
perament hops from project to project; in other
matters, such as education or hygiene, he
becomes the devotee of every latest nostrum and
fad; in philanthropy, is always pinning his faith
to some new specific for washing the Ethiopian
white ; in religion, to a new doctrine or organiza-

19

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

tion or method which is to revolutionize the
Church and the world. In short, the tempta
tion that everywhere besets the optimist is the
"short cut"; and soon as he is disillusioned about
one he is apt to be fascinated by another. As
the virtue of the optimistic temperament is its
openness to new ideas, new personalities and
movements, so its vice is to be for ever taking up
with some new thing, and finding salvation in
it because it is new.

All this may seem to suggest that optimism
is a quality of doubtful value. But this would be
a false inference. The practical value of optim
ism amounts to a necessity. Without something
of it one might almost as well put up the shutters
and close the business of living. Nor is it pos
sible to possess too much of it. There cannot be
an excessive optimism. The need is not to tem
per and dilute it with occasional admixtures of
pessimism, but like every natural quality and
power it needs to be educated. That is the sec
ond thing of which I wish to speak — the educa
tion of optimism.

Optimism, when it rises above the merely
temperamental, becomes a fixed faith in the
optimum, the best — faith in the best and hope
for the best. And if you ask me what education
is, I say that, more than anything else, it is the
process by which, in any province of human

20

N

OPTIMISM

effort, we get an ever growing and deepening
conception of the "best" in that province, and of
the way to that "best." And what we call the
education of a soul, of human experience as a
unity, is the process by which we get an ever
expanding and deepening conception of the
ideal "best," the best for the whole empire of
life. That education is given — one would rather
not say it, but I fear it must be said — is in
large measure given through disillusionment.
Whether it be due to our fault or to our natural
limitation — and no doubt it is due partly to both
— the face of truth is unveiled to us by disillu
sionment. We are driven from the surface into
the depths by disillusionment. And so optim
ism, while never changing its character as faith
in the best, must always be changing its ground
with our advancing conception of the best. In
this, indeed, consists the difference between the
optimism that is in process of education and that
which remains uneducated. As in the first stages
of prairie agriculture men are content to scratch
the surface of the soil and scatter the seed and
look for a crop, and when this fails some merely
betake themselves elsewhere to practise the same
naive kind of tillage, while others take to plough
ing more deeply, and farming more scientifically
where they are; so is it with the false and the
true optimism. Some learn nothing by disillu-

21

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

sionment. They scratch the surface of life here,
then they scratch it there, seeking still the same
results by the same methods, their conception of
the "best" still the same in its thinness and
crudity. Others learn. Their optimism seeks a
deeper soil in which to root itself ; when the shal
lower springs run dry, it sinks an artesian well.

It is only thus that optimism can adjust itself
to facts, especially to that fact which inevitably
has so large a place in human life, the fact of
failure. On the material plane, where we are
set in conflict with circumstances, or in competi
tion with our fellows for the prizes which con
stitute what is ordinarily called success, a pro
portion of failure is a mathematical certainty.
Every business, every profession, has its disap
pointed men — and must have. Not even Canada
is wide enough for a universal success of that
sort; and if optimism were justified only by
such success, it would be a precarious investment
indeed, likely to leave on our hands a deal of
bankrupt stock. But it is not so. Disillusioned
perhaps, but with purged eyesight, optimism
wings its flight towards the loftier realms^ of the
Ideal : takes "sanctuary within the holier blue."

Yet it is here, not in the material arena, but
where man is set against the challenge of the
ideal, that the experience of failure is most inevi
table. Here it is most surely true that, as Steven-

22

OPTIMISM

son says in his flashing, paradoxical way, "Our
business in this world is not to succeed, but to
continue failing in good spirits." A hard say
ing, but a true one. The artist's portfolio is full
of unfinished sketches — failures. The ministers
drawer is full of unfinished sermons — failures.
The life-path of the best men and women is
strewn with broken purposes, and aspirations
never realized — failures. As Browning asks:

Fail I alone in words and deeds?
Why, all men strive, and who succeeds?
What hand and brain went ever paired?
What heart alike conceived and dared?
What act proved all its thought had been?

Here we are all failures; every man worth
his salt, at least, is a failure. I assume that we
all believe in an ideal "best," and that in broad
outline we all have the same conception of that
"best," as not material but spiritual, as com
prised in the great triad of Truth, Beauty and
Goodness. I assume that we all consent to the
fine saying of Keats, that the use of the world is
to be the "vale of soul-making." But we hold
this truth, not only with various degrees of clear
ness and intensity of conviction, we hold it with
differences of meaning. Probably no two of us
fill in the outline with exactly the same content.
Granted that the supreme end is soul-making,
what is the ideal soul, and what is the use of the

23

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

world for its making? Optimism is belief in
the "best"; but what is the "best?" We may
define it. We may say with Kant that it is the
good will; but then what is it that constitutes
a good will? We may say with the Christian
that it is likeness to Christ, a character whose
mainspring is love; but who knows the heights
and depths and breadths of such a character?
The "best" is not only an actually unfulfilled
ideal, it is necessarily so. It recedes like the
horizon as we approach it; and, if in the mun
dane sphere of effort failure is never improb
able, here it is inevitable. It is the mark of
every true life that it signifies and intends more
than it ever succeeds in actually being,

It may seem as if such a view of life is deeply
tinged with pessimism; but in truth it is the
optimistic, and the only optimistic view. Such
a sense of failure comes not from our littleness
but from our greatness. It is the sigh of the soul
for its unrealized self. Not the publican, the
self-confessed failure, but the self-praising
Pharisee is the pessimist Were there a man
who should say that, being what he is, he is an
ideal human creature — having attained and
being already perfect — of all self-valuations his
would be the meanest. Such a man would be
wallowing in the depths of unconscious pessim
ism. It is he who says. "I am a failure," and is

24

OPTIMISM

conscious of it, who in truth rates himself
highly. He is the optimist. It is to him that the
limitless kingdom of the future opens its gates.

Here, then, is the mark of true optimism.
Not only does it survive failure; it is educated
by failure; it thrives on failure. A well-known
artist has said that no picture is worth anything
until it has been spoiled three times. What
makes any picture great is gathered from the
brink of failure. To gather the flower of vic
tory from the brink of failure — that is the criter
ion and function of true optimism. There is in
it an indestructible resiliency, an innate power
of recovery, of revival, of resurrection, from dis
illusionment and apparent disaster and defeat.
It calls men always to a winning fight, the one
winning fight there can be, perhaps for all finite
life, certainly for us — the fight of faith.

But if this is its criterion and its function,
what is its source? Whence is this invincible
faith in the "best," and the hope for it, derived?
Optimism is not only a temperament or an atti
tude toward life; it is a philosophy, a creed.
The education of optimism in individual experi
ence is always related to larger movements in the
thought and experience of mankind. The his
tory of optimism in the larger sense, the history
of man's expanding conception of the "best,"
and of the risings and fallings and resurrections

25

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

of his faith and hope in the "best" has yet to be
written. It is even now at an acute stage of its
making. The tragedy of the war has not killed
optimism; but it has given a severe blow to an
optimism. It has turned to something like ditch-
water the heady drink with which for half a
century the modern world has kept its spirits up.
That optimism, in its main characteristics, has
been evolutionary, materialistic, humanitarian.
Its presupposition was a necessary and almost
automatic evolution of human affairs in the right
direction. The god of our idolatry was progress
(spelled with a capital P). What we meant by
it — progress towards what — we did not too
closely enquire; but in the main we meant an
ampler supply and a wider diffusion of the
means of material well-being, to be brought
about by more scientific exploitation and distri
bution of nature's wealth. The end in view was
not so much to make man a nobler being, pos
sessing in himself more of the sources of satisfac
tion, as it was to make him a more elaborately
comfortable being, possessing and at the same
time becoming dependent on a more and more
complex apparatus of external aids. And by
natural consequence, this optimism centred in
Man. Great and marvellous were thy works, oh
Man! Had we not one by one wrung nature's
secrets from her keeping? Had we not explored

26

OPTIMISM

the heights of heaven and the ocean's abyss?
Had we not built mighty engines, and leviathan
ships, and mammoth cities with booming trade,
and with mills and factories and universities
and hospitals on an always more stupendous
scale? We had constituted a wonderful empire
of things, and called this empire of ^things civi
lization, and had enthroned man, modern man,
as its lord and king. Swinburne gave voice to it,
when he wrote his Hymn to Man:

Glory to man in the highest, for man is the master of things.

And then came the scathing irony of the
War; for ghastly and cruel as it is in every way,
it is above all ironical and humiliating.
Humanity in the twentieth century has shown
itself to be but like children who have laid their
hands on gunpowder and edged tools. Our trea
sure, the accumulation of generations, is blown
into the air and sunk in the sea. Our science
only adds to the horrors of war the submarine
and the aeroplane, the high explosive and the
deadly gas. Our political and diplomatic com
binations only array against each other, not
armies but nations, not nations but empires in
arms. Disillusionment with a vengeance! Yes,
but through disillusionment lies the way to
truth. It is possible to form a really more op
timistic judgment of ourselves to-day than half a

27

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

dozen years ago. We have found that we have
"hearts for a cause," that we are "noble yet."
We have got a truer scale of values. In the com
petitions of a rampant commercialism it was
made to appear as if the "best" consisted in the
qualities that make for successful self-seeking.
Our soldiers have taught us again the supremacy
of self-sacrifice. We have cast behind us the
ideal of the comfortable, and have affirmed that
for truth and honour and chivalry every price
must be paid, that these are the things for which
it is worth while even to die, and without which
life is unlivable. There is in the mind and soul
of the nation a more exalted vision of the "best."

But with this comes once more the need of a
deeper basis for optimism, for faith in the "best."
The old question meets us again, as live to-day
as when the Book of Job or the tragedies of
Aeschylus were written : Does this world, this
system of things in which we live and struggle,
recognize those values which we affirm to be
supreme? Can we have faith that in the nature
of things good must ultimately prevail over evil,
that in striving for the "best" we have the deep
eternal law of the universe behind us? The
thought of man to-day is being driven back on
that greatest of all issues.

On one side it is said with great force that the
optimistic view is groundless, mere auto-sugges-

28

OPTIMISM

tion. The one power to overcome the world is
the soul's inalienable power of despising and
defying it. Faith and hope must go, that alone
remains. All that remains for upright men is
to go on doing the best with life, even though
they know that the struggle is fore-doomed to
failure. Shall I quote Henley's famous lines?

Out of the night that covers me —
Dark as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods there be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud :
Under the bludgeonings of Chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shades;
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishment the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

But is not this a vain boast? Even to be
captain of one's soul is not to be master of one's
fate, unless to nail the flag to the mast and go
down fighting, when one must go down in any
event, is to be the master of fate.

Bertrand Russell faces the issue more
squarely when in his Religion of a Free Man he
says: "Henceforth we must learn to build our

29

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

soul's habitation on the one firm foundation of
an unyielding despair." There is no reason, no
conscience in the universe but our own; no law
but the eternal redistribution of matter and
motion. We may be brave, we may die in the
last ditch; but there is one winning fight, one
only, the fight of death and everlasting nothing
ness. Neither we, nor our race, nor any value
or ideal we have cherished and striven for, can
escape the universal doom.

Such is the tragic situation of a high moral
consciousness as pitted against a non-moral uni
verse. Tragic indeed, if real. But is it even
possible? Certainly nothing could be more
unaccountable. Here are we, beings in whom
morality, often as we may be disloyal to it, is
the deepest and strongest thing, bound by our
very nature to fight the good fight; and we are
at the same time part and product of a system of
things which is soulless and conscienceless, cos
mic dust in motion. How does such a universe
come to have evolved such beings, to accuse it,
to judge, despise and condemn it? Does the sea
bring forth the eagle? Or the dry land the fish?
Does darkness beget light, or would a soundless
universe produce hearing? Does a cotton fac
tory turn out symphonies and poems? To say
that a non-moral universe has produced men is
to say something still more incredible. Reason

30

OPTIMISM

will not have it. And the deepest instincts of
the human soul will not have it. Men have
passed through darker days than these and
deeper waters and fierier furnaces, and yet have
not lost their faith that in the end all things were
upon their side. Nay, it has been in such straits
that optimism has risen to its loftiest flights.
Never have men been so sure of the everlasting
law and kingdom of Righteousness as when
falsehood and wrong have been mightiest upon
the earth, "For thy sake we are killed all the
day long; we are accounted as sheep for the
slaughter." Yet ours is the winning fight. We
are more than conquerors. Inexplicable as it
may be, one of the things that cannot be perman
ently killed out in the human soul is its optim
ism, its faith in the "best" and hope for the
"best."

The War has once more brought this issue
to a sharp point in many minds. And the con
clusion is forced on us with a new urgency that
there is no basis for optimism except in that
interpretation of life which we call religious
faith — an interpretation which expressly dis
claims being an explanation — the conviction that
the Power which creates and conducts the world,
and has staged the drama of human history
thereon, means something by it, something really
right and wise and good. If it be said that this

31

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

is to take refuge in mysticism, I would point
out that rational thought has everywhere to take
refuge in mysticism. Trust is the key to life. In
the end all our great certainties are rooted and
grounded in trust. We take each other on trust.
It is the bond by which human society subsists;
our loves and friendships live by the mystic
sense of trust. We take nature and its laws ulti
mately on trust. The validity of our perception
of all external phenomena is based on trust, on
the assurance of what can never be logically
demonstrated, that there is a correspondence
between external reality and the percipient
mind, that they are made the one for the other.
And if such a trust is rational, though the matter
is incapable of proof, it is no less rational to
trust that there is in the universe that which cor
responds to our moral intuitions and demands,
that the Power that dwells and works at the heart
of existence is the same that dwells and works
in the yearning for truth, the fidelity to right,
the reverence, the aspiration and the love which
are the light and strength of our being.

No facile optimism will serve us long; only
that which sounds the lowest depths will serve
us to the end. The final Best, far beyond out-
furthest gaze, must have as its crowning glory,
the transformed and transfigured worst.

And what is this but the optimism of the
32

OPTIMISM

Cross? Love suffering, love sacrificing; and by
suffering and sacrifice redeeming: love in the
Divine itself, suffering, sacrificing, redeeming;
love in man, yes, and the love there is in nature,
suffering, sacrificing, and by suffering and sacri
fice redeeming — this is the clue to the unex
plored windings of the labyrinth. It is the clue
for us all to follow. Faith, Hope, Love, these
three abide, and the greatest of these is Love.
Love is the "best," and if we follow Love, we
shall not be deserted by its fellows, Faith and
Hope.

33

II.

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE
TOWARD WRONG

Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth.

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever
shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if a man will sue thee at law, and take away thy coat,
let him have thy cloak also.

And whosoever shall compel thee to go with him a mile, go
with him twain.

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow
of thee, turn thou not away. — Matthew v: 38-42.

I N this paragraph of the Sermon on the Mount
our Lord inculcates by four illustrative
instances the duty of not resisting the "evil
man." There is first the case of bodily assault:
"Whosoever smiteth thee on the right cheek,
turn to him the other also." Next, the case of an
action at law: "If any man would go to law with
thee and take away thy coat, let him have thy
cloak also." In order to avoid quarrel and litiga
tion you are to be willing to surrender more than
is demanded. Next, the case of forced service :
"Whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go
with him twain." If service is illegitimately
demanded of you, instead of resisting the imposi
tion you are voluntarily to render more. Lastly,

3?

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

the case of pecuniary solicitation: "Give to him
that asketh of thee, and from him that would
borrow of thee turn thou not away." Here it
must be presumed that the asking is of that
unreasonable sort which naturally provokes
resentment.

In these words our Lord demands, or at any
rate seems to demand, the entire renunciation of
self-defense and self-vindication, of standing on
one's rights in any way. The command is abso
lute. No reason is assigned for it. Nothing is
said of any ulterior object, such as shaming or
overcoming the adversary by heaping "coals of
fire" upon his head. The duty is stated as simply
self-evident. So far, however, is this from being
the case that few words of Jesus have been more
diversely interpreted. A few individuals here
and there, and one or two bodies of Christians,
like the Quakers and the Mennonites, have
understood them and have endeavored to act
upon them with absolute literalness, and have
found in them the very pith of practical Christ
ianity. On the other hand, competent scholars
and candid thinkers have declared that such
literalism is one of the worst perversions of the
Gospel, holding up the teaching of Jesus to the
ridicule of all sane, thinking men. In any case
it must be admitted that these precepts, whether
we regard them as appealing directly to the

36

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE

moral sense or as resting on the principle of
expediency, present a problem of no small diffi
culty. There is no normally constituted person
whose conscience does not inform him that it
is wrong to steal, wrong also to deny to a needy
neighbor the help which it is in one's power to
give. But it is more than questionable whether
the normal conscience can recognize an absolute
moral ideal in the requirement, that, if by high
handed violence one take from you a portion of
your clothing, you are cheerfully to hand over
to him a portion of the remainder; or, if the
principle is applied to corporate social action,
would acquiesce in the judgment that the police
force is a thoroughly unchristian institution.
Nor is it easy to see how, if the person and pro
perty of all were to be at the mercy of the most
violent and unscrupulous, the social frame work
would be strengthened and the world become a
better habitation for human life. The fact is
that such literalism as Tolstoi's, for example,
represents not a Christian but a Rabbinical view
of moral law, Jesus was not, and could not be.
a legislator in the sense in which Moses was ; and
to suppose that the Sermon on the Mount is just
a new and improved version of the Mosaic legis
lation is not only to misunderstand the method of
Jesus but to miss what is most distinctive in His
religious aims.

37

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

These injunctions obviously express a prin
ciple, or, rather, a method of applying a prin
ciple; and to discover the principle, and also the
rationale of the method, we must study them in
their original setting. There they stand in vehe
ment opposition to the method of dealing with
wrong by retaliation, to the vindictive spirit
exhibited in the Mosaic maxim, "an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth." This was the spirit
that prevailed in the ancient world, both Jewish
and Gentile. The great Roman, Sulla, when
from his death-bed he reviewed his career,
summed up his good fortune in this, that no man
had done more good to his friends or more harm
to his enemies. The Jewish character also had
a dark, vengeful strain in it, as some even of the
Old Testament Scriptures, like the Book of
Esther and certain of the Psalms, remain to
show. Now this spirit Jesus utterly condemns.
He can find no words too strong to express His
abhorrence of it. He sees in its removal, or, let
us rather say, in its reversal, a distinctive feature
of the new spirit He had come to create in the
world. And so true is this, and so much has it
impressed mankind, that still when we speak of
any one as acting in a "Christian spirit," we
mean that he has displayed in some signal way
the power of forgiving injuries.

But why is retaliation wrong? Jesus does
38

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE

not say why. Intuitively He sees how undivine
it is; and expects all who share His spirit to see
it in the same light. Still, if we are to determine
whether in all cases — or, if not, in what cases—
the contrary method is applicable, we must con
sider the ethical principles which are involved.

We may estimate the morality of retaliation
in the first place by its social effect. That effect
is only to multiply the amount of evil in the
world. The vendetta, personal, tribal, or
national, is the means by which strife breeds ever
fresh strife, and wrong fresh wrong; a kind of
diabolical tennis-match in which the ball of
injury and hate is hurled to and fro, and which,
but for the limitations of human life and
resource, would continue to the end of time, fill
ing the earth with the ever increasing reverbera
tions of enmity and violence.

Or again we may consider it as a manifesta
tion of the moral life of the individual. There
is nothing regarding which the moral judgment
is apt to be further misled. Often men do not
feel retaliation to be a crime; on the contrary,
they often feel it to be emphatically right. To
"get even" with those who do them an ill turn,
so far from exciting a feeling of shame, makes
them glow with honest pride and self-approval.
It satisfies the imperious demand of what they
feel to be their natural and proper self-respect.

39

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

The person who carelessly or maliciously injures
me depreciates my personal worth; he treats me
as a person of no consequence, as one who is
weak and defenceless or pusillanimous and tame-
spirited, and whose rights need not be scrupu
lously regarded. Consequently, if I do not
retaliate, I seem to endorse this humiliating esti
mate of my personality; while what I naturally
desire is to correct it as quickly and as drastic
ally as possible. It is here that the crucial diffi
culty of Christ's law of forgiveness and non-
retaliation lies. To submit to injury without
effective protest is felt to be weakness, a letting
down of the proper dignity of one's manhood.
But the teaching and yet more the example of
Jesus have shown the world how absolutely
inverted this view of self-respecting manhood is.
Weakness — to be inflamed with resentment, this
is weakness. Humiliation — to be so influenced
by men as to reproduce their evil spirit, this is
humiliation. Strength — to refuse to do wrong
because another has done wrong, this is strength.
To realize that no man can really hurt you —
hurt your soul — unless he can make you hate
him, this is self-respect and self-vindication.
In the ultimate truth of things, the power to for
give, the power to use all injuries only as an
occasion for the assertion of what in us is of the
most opposite character, goodwill in all its mani-

40

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE

festations — this is moral sovereignty, the one
absolute superiority to all wrongs and all wrong
doers.

On the contrary, think what is the state of
the merely revengeful man. It is a state from
which love is entirely absent, a state of egoism
blinded and misled, inflamed and militant.
Revenge, as such, has no other end than self-
gratification; and the gratification it seeks con
sists only in the infliction of pain upon another.
The vindictive man finds his sweetest pleasure
in another's grief; his proudest triumph in
another's humiliation — surely the most devilish
state in which it is possible for a human being
to exist. It is not surprising, therefore, that the
aversion of Jesus to the vengeful spirit is so
strong that "the most emphatic utterance of the
opposite quality is for Him precisely the right
thing."

For next it is to be observed that Jesus enjoins
not mere tranquil endurance of evil, but a volun
tary readiness to turn the other cheek, go the
second mile, give one's cloak also. The Christ
ian's attitude towards wrong is not to be that of
mere passive submission. That might be weak
ness, cowardice, or phlegmatic indifference. It
might only prove that, like Hamlet, one is
"pigeon-livered, and lacks gall to make oppres
sion bitter." The Christian's attitude is to be

41

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

active, militant. He is to suffer wrong not
because he must but because he wills; and he
is to prove this by voluntarily surrendering more
than he must. He is thus to carry the war into
the enemy's country and overcome evil with
good.

In these principles, then, Jesus first repudi
ates and condemns in the strongest manner the
vengeful disposition, the spirit that finds its
characteristic satisfaction in inflicting injury
upon those who have inflicted injury upon us;
and, secondly, He requires us to give practical
proof that goodwill is unabated, that love is
stronger than hate, patience stronger than anger,
generosity than greed. And it is evident that
these precepts indicate a particular method of
applying the universal principle of love. And
love must teach how to obey them; the precepts
must be interpreted by the principle. It is easy
by a mechanical interpretation to push them to
practical absurdity. By giving liberally to every
able-bodied beggar who asks an alms, would one
be acting for the best interests of society, or of
the able-bodied beggar himself? Would a mer
chant whose shop boy is caught purloining from
the till be well-advised in promoting him to be
cashier and giving him the keys of the safe? It
is easy to ask such questions; yet we must greatly
beware of minimizing the force and scope of the

42

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE

method of dealing with evil which Christ here
prescribes. Vengefulness may punish and even
crush the wrongdoer; but it does not conquer
him, does not eradicate the evil principle from
his heart, does not make him ashamed of his sin,
does not win him over to good. Love often does,
and it is the only power that can. The amazing
truth revealed in the Gospel is that love, work
ing by this method of returning good for evil, is
the power on which God Himself chiefly relies
for our moral regeneration. When we smote
Him on the one cheek by our sins, He turned to
us the other also on the Cross. And this is the
power He bids us rely on too. It may seem
folly; but it is the foolishness of God, which is
wiser than men. It may even fail — we have no
guarantee that it will always succeed — but we
must take the risk of insensibility and ingrati
tude, as God does.

The result of this part of our investigation
may be summed up in the words of Bishop Gore :
"So far as our personal feeling is concerned, we
ought always to be ready to turn the other cheek,
to give without desire or hope of receiving again.
Love knows no limits but those which love itself
imposes. When love resists or refuses, it must
be because compliance would be a violation of
love."

We enter upon the second part of our enquiry
43

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

when we ask: Will love ever so resist or refuse?
Is the turning of the other cheek not only one
method — but the only method by which wise
and enlightened love will act in seeking the
highest good of men and society? Are we to
take these precepts of Christ as prescribing an
invariable course of action in every case? Or
ought we to understand them as enjoining a spirit
which will seek its end by this method but pos
sibly by other methods also according to circum
stances? This is an issue of vast importance;
how vast is seldom realized. The question of
war upon which the pacifist concentrates his
arguments and his emotions, forms a very small
part of it. If it is the law of Christ that wrong
is in no case to be encountered except by the
opportunity of doing redoubled wrong, every
man who puts his money in a safe or puts a lock
upon his door, or takes any precautions against
assault upon his person and property is break
ing the law of Christ, is resisting the "evil man."
And much more than even this is involved.
Literally construed, Our Lord's precepts have
only an individual reference. They prescribe
the duty of one person face to face with another
person; they do not lay down any rule of con
duct when the rights and interests of a third per
son are concerned. But those who find in them
a prohibition of all forcible resistance to evil, as

44

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE

for example defensive war, at this point desert
the literal interpretation which so far they insist
upon. They assume that a society, a nation, has
a collective personality which can act, and is
bound to act, in the same way as the individual.
Consequently, they conclude that, according to
the teaching of Christ, love requires of us the
willingness to sacrifice not only our own inter
ests, but the interests of others also — I am not
only to turn my own cheek to the smiter but to
stand by, forbidden to use more than verbal
pleading and protest, when I see others smitten
and robbed. Now without arguing for the pre
sent whether this is or is not what love requires,
let me point out that this is a question which goes
down to the foundation of all things, and chal
lenges the moral principle of all government,
human and divine. If this is the true interpre
tation, all enforcement of law in the family or
the state is contrary to the ethics of Christ. Nay,
even in the universe; for what is wrong in man
cannot become right when it is ascribed to God,
nor can that which is right in God be wrong for
man. The whole conception of punitive or dis
tributive justice as a moral ideal is swept away.
Let us endeavor to see what light the teach
ing and example of Christ Himself shed upon
this question. And the first thing I find is that
in Him the absolute meekness and patient endur-

45

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

ance of wrong, which He enjoins, and of which
His prayer for those who nailed Him to the
cross is the supreme example, was not incom
patible with anger, with a fierce indignation
against wrong. If one would know with what
passion of invective human language may be
charged, how words may be made to play like
forked lightning around the heads of the wrong
doer and the hypocrite, let him read Christ's
denunciation of the Scribes and Pharisees in the
twenty-third chapter of Matthew. I know no
other such expression of concentrated wrath.
True, it was purely moral wrath. There was in
it nothing egoistic, nothing vindictive. It was
wrath against wrong as such : and it was wrath
against the persons who did the wrong, and by
continuing impenitent indentified themselves
with it. We feel this to be right. There is an
anger which is worthy only of the devil, but
there is an anger which is pure, lof ty, godlike ;
and when a man is destitute of such anger, has
nothing in him that flames up at the sight of
injustice or cruelty, nothing that flashes out
indignation against the hypocrite, the traitor,
the tyrant, there is something lacking to com
plete moral manhood. And if we ask how this
is compatible with the voluntary suffering of
wrong commanded in the Sermon on the Mount
and exemplified on the Cross, the answer is that

46

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE

in Jesus, and therefore in the true Christian,
both spring from the same root — love. I once
heard a celebrated preacher say: "I do not
believe in a God who is all love, who is just one
great kiss." But that is quite to misunderstand
what the nature of love is. Love is not wholly
saccharine ; love does not always pet and fondle.
Love has in it the sharpness of the sword, and
the withering flame of fire. Love always suffers
by another's sin : but it may suffer by causing the
sinner to suffer. And whether love ought to
meet wrong with tranquil submission and meek
suffering, or with the antagonism of righteous
wrath and rebuke, love's own inherent wisdom
must ever teach. There may be those whose
moral condition requires not the gentleness but
the severity of love.

This leads up to the further question; when
is this disposition of righteous anger and anta
gonism to wrong to be carried into action. For
it is absurd to imagine that it can be right to
possess the disposition and to express it in words,
but wrong to express it in a course of action.
Words and actions alike are manifestations of
moral dispositions, and only as such are they of
moral value. Now in the first place it is clear
to me that when the interests of others are at
stake, we are bound to act in vindication of the
right. The teaching of Jesus requires of us in

47

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

every case the spirit of willing self-sacrifice, and,
in most cases at least, the practice of it. But it
never requires of us to sacrifice the rights and
interests of other people — an important distinc
tion frequently lost sight of. There is, for
example, a wide difference between what a man
may or ought to do on his own account and what
he may or ought to do as trustee for another. I
may do what I will with my own. I may sell
my goods at less than market value; I may not
insist upon my debtors paying me the last
farthing; I may pay one man for an hour's work
as much as I pay another for bearing the burden
and heat of the day; but, if I am acting as trustee
of another's property, these kind and charitable
actions become nothing else than a breach of
trust. And this principle that we have no right
to sacrifice others reaches far. Let us take
Tolstoi's famous example: If you see a brutal
man killing a child or outraging a woman, you
may plead with him, you may interpose your
own body between the assailant and his victim;
but one thing you must not do — oppose him to
the length of bodily violence or placing his life
in danger; or, as Tolstoi puts it, "deliberately
abandon the law you have received from God."
It may be said confidently that such a view of
duty is repugnant to the normal moral sense,
and, with fewest exceptions, men would indig-

48

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE

nantly deny that such a law can be the law of
God. If you have the power, even at the risk of
injury to yourself, to save the victims of violence,
you are to that extent a trustee of righteousness.
You can renounce only what is your own. Your
pride, your property, your rights, your wounded
self-love, your life — these you may resign. To
such self-sacrifice Christ calls you. But if you
are entrusted with the guardianship of the weak
against the strong, of the wronged against the
wrong-doer, of the human sheep against the
human wolf, then the principle of self-sacrifice
will apply in quite another way than that of non-
resistance.

Clearly, also, this principle carries with it
the action of public punitive justice. The State
is trustee for the people and is bound to pre
vent lawless aggression upon its subjects, and, in
order to ensure its prevention, to punish it when
it occurs. It may be noted that the lex talionis,
"an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," was
originally not a code of private vengeance but a
maxim of public law. It belongs to the most
primitive stratum of Semitic jurisprudence,
going back not only to the earliest Hebrew but
to Babylonian legislation. In the Code of Ham
murabi it is written: "If a man has made the
tooth of a man that is his equal to fall out, one
shall make his tooth to fall out; and if a man

49

4

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

has caused a gentleman's eye to be lost, his eye
shall one cause to be lost." Now the morality
of such a law will depend upon the idea that
animates it. If the purpose is to compensate the
man who has suffered the loss of a tooth by the
pleasure of seeing his enemy under the dentist's
hands, this is precisely what Christ condemns,
whether in private or public action. But if the
purpose was, as may charitably be hoped, to
secure that by losing his own tooth the wrong
doer might be brought to a due sense of the
injury he had inflicted, and that he and other
similarly disposed persons might be deterred
from making a habit of damaging the teeth of
peaceable citizens, we can see a rough and ready
justice in it.

The rationale of public justice is that one
must undo the effects of the wrong he has done.
One who has stolen must be made to restore
what he has theftuously taken. More than that,
however. By his act he has injured the whole
community. He has diminished the general
sense of security, and has weakened the moral
influence of the law, so that were he only com
pelled to make restitution when detected, his
example would still furnish to other dishonest
people an inducement to steal on the chance of
escaping detection. It is just and right, there
fore, that he be so dealt with that there will be

50

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE

afterwards as little temptation to steal as before
he stole. A perfectly just punishment would
be such — no more and no less — as to place the
interests of society in the same position in which
they were before the crime was committed.
What do the principles of Jesus say to this con
ception of punishment? First and obviously,
that punishment must not be inflicted in a spirit
of revenge. Vindictiveness, a feeling of gratifi
cation at the suffering inflicted on a criminal, is
as unchristian in the community as in the indi
vidual. All the barbarous and ferocious pun
ishments of former times, the unmentionable
horrors, which served no other end than to glut
the appetite for savage cruelty, have, under the
influence of Christianity, fallen into blessed
desuetude; and the conviction steadily grows
that even for the protection of society the most
effective kind of punishment is that which aims
at the reformation of the offender (the only
real guarantee that he himself will not repeat
the crime, and the best deterrent to others which
his example can afford).

But does not the teaching of Jesus altogether
sweep aside such a conception of justice, as the
Christian anarchist contends? I am unable to
find in word or deed of Jesus any hint of such
a purpose. He rebukes the Pharisees for
neglecting the right administration of justice

51

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

Matt. 23 1 23); and although
naturally he has little to say regarding human
jurisprudence, yet if He had regarded its basal
principle as wrong, He could have found oppor
tunity enough of saying so. But if He had little
to say regarding human government, He had
very much to say regarding the Divine. All
goes back to this : How does God, Who is love,
govern in His kingdom? This, which is the
crucial point in the whole enquiry, is singularly
lost sight of by many. Christ bids us be per
fect as our Father in heaven is perfect. He con
stantly illustrates the moral nature of God and
the principles of Divine action by human
analogies. It is fundamental to the teaching of
Jesus that man's moral nature is the image of
God's. Human love and Divine love, human
righteousness and Divine righteousness, are the
same in character and content. Otherwise no
real fellowship in spirit and in truth could be
possible between God and man. How then does
God govern in His kingdom? Jesus Christ
has taught us the amazing truth that God's
chosen and supreme method of meeting evil is
the method of sin-bearing, self-sacrificing love,
the method of the Cross. But is this His sole
method? Has He no other which He uses as
auxiliary to this, or which, in the temporary or
ultimate failure of this, He is constrained to

52

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE

employ? There is no room for doubt as to the
answer Jesus gave to that question. God is the
Father of spirits and seeks always to win us and
rule us by truth and grace; but nowhere else
than in the teaching of Jesus is that fact more
clearly set side by side with this, that God is
also the Almighty Ruler and Judge of the uni
verse, the Trustee of eternal righteousness, and
that He meets evil with physical antagonisms,
corrections, and compulsions, administered and
directed for moral ends. Whom He loveth He
chasteneth. Those who are obstinately evil He
punishes; punishes here and will punish here
after. By His very love God is bound to anta
gonize wrong. His love requires that right shall
be rewarded and wrong punished. This, indeed,
is inherent in the constitution of a universe
created and administered by love. And if God
in His government act thus, it follows that
earthly governments, in their lower sphere, and
that each of us, in so far as he is a trustee of the
moral order, must do likewise.

We come lastly to the question of war. And
it is very plain that in an ideal world, a really
Christian world, just as little as there could be
policeman or magistrate, could there be inter
national warfare; and with the faith Christ
ianity inspires, it is not extravagant to look for
ward to a time when they shall all alike have

53

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

become obsolete. As we look back with some
astonishment to a time when it was thought
that questions of honor, as between man and
man, could be settled only by mortal combat, so
a time will come when men shall look back with
uncomprehending wonder to the dark ages in
which nations put to the arbitrament of bayonets
and artillery questions which reason and con
science should judge and decide. Even as a
result of the present Armageddon we may hope
that everywhere men's eyes will be opened to
the sheer stupidity as well as the criminality of
war; that the whole civilized world will be
united against war, and that in the future one
nation will no more be able to wage aggressive
war against another nation without the certainty
of punishment, than a man in this country can
at present attempt to force a duel upon his
neighbor without being locked up for breach of
the peace. But we have to deal with the world
as it is. And that the law of love, the teaching
of Jesus, intends that the nations of the world,
their political freedom, the honor of their
women, the life and property of their subjects,
shall be at the mercy of whichsoever of them is
most selfish, conscienceless, and morally unde
veloped, or that all armed resistance to aggres
sion and tyranny and all armed defence of a
nation's rights and liberties is wrong, I can see
no ground at all for believing.

54

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE

In the world we of this generation are liv
ing in, there is only one really militaristic nation,
only one which proudly avows itself to be a
"war-state" and believes that war is a nation's
business, by which it grows strong and wealthy
and morally great, and which therefore
organizes itself for war. And assuredly it is not
the will of God that a nation with such ideals
should dominate the world and impose its
"kultur" upon it. Assuredly it is the will of
God that, when the conflict is forced upon us
we should do everything and suffer everything to
prevent this. The government of a country, if
it sacrificed the rights and liberties of its sub
jects to such a power, would do as great a wrong
as if it sacrificed them to the criminal or the
madman.

There is one kind of war, and one only,
which the law of love will sanction, and not
only sanction but enjoin — war which is a weapon
of righteousness not of hate; war to prevent or
to redress foul international wrong; war for the
sake of peace based on righteousness, its only
foundation, not for extension of territory; for
the punishment of evil doers, not for the sub
jugation of rivals; for the establishment of free
dom, for the protection of the weak and inno
cent, not for oppression and the sating of ruth
less ambition. Such is the war we are now wag-

55

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

ing. Let us wage it in a spirit of firm depen
dence upon God, who has laid this terrible task
upon us; and without malice toward the foe,
In war, as in all else, the one thing the teaching
of Christ forbids and the spirit of Christ
excludes is hate, a vindictive disposition which
exults and gloats over the suffering and disaster
of others. It is the melancholy necessity of the
case that we can establish the right only by
inflicting defeat and immediate disaster upon
our adversary. But though the tragic duty has
to be performed, just as we have to fight against
the hallucinated fury of a maniac, we must have
the courage, and maintain it, not to return hate
for hate. And notwithstanding all that is hap
pening in this year of the Christian era, let not
the hope fail us that God will give increasingly
to mankind that divine spirit which came in
Jesus Christ to restore the world, and the new
day dawn when strife and sin shall

Pass with the stars, and leave us with the sun.

56

III.

THE POWER OF SYMPATHY

I sat where they sat. — Ezekiel Hi: 15.

T AST Sunday evening I spoke of the sovereign
'law of Love that runs through all life, and
governs all life. The whole, or nearly the whole
problem of making a success of human life,
either for the individual, or for society, lies in
bringing to bear this unifying power of Love,
upon all its complex relations. To-night, I want
to advance a step. Love is the law and the
power by which all the problems of humanity
must be solved. Sympathy is the necessary
atmosphere.

When we look at human life we are struck
by the diversities which separate men: — diver
sities of fortune, race, religion and occupation,
and, deeper still, of mind, taste and character.
There are the poor and the rich ; the busy toiler
and the people of leisure; the man of affairs and
those who live in the world of thought; the
religious and the irreligious; the virtuous and
the criminal. And these diversities become real
lines of division. They create what we call
the separate classes which exist in every com-

57

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

munity. The poor live with the poor; the rich
suround themselves with the rich; the religious
with the religious; the criminal with the crim
inal. We associate with those who think our
thoughts, feel our feelings, share our tastes, con
firm our opinions, and have the same outlook
on life and its affairs. And all this, it might
seem, makes sympathy impossible. What can
the man immersed in business from morning
till night know of the aspirations of the artist?
How can the affluent appreciate the bitter
struggle of the poor? Can we indeed put our
selves in any other human being's place? In a
large measure we can. Besides these separate
places of circumstance and education, there are
the far broader places of universal human
nature and experience. We are all of one clay.
In our own nature we have the key to every
man's nature if we use it. Accidental differ
ences drop out when we come to the big things
of life. King and beggar, ploughman and mil
lionaire share these fundamental elements.
Everyone who has sorrowed can sympathize
with another's sorrow. Everyone who has
rejoiced, can feel with another's joy. Everyone
who has struggled against his own temptation,
can sympathize with another against his. Every
one who has sinned, can sympathize with his
fallen brother or sister. Everyone who has

58

THE POWER OF SYMPATHY

repented, with another's penitence. There are
these great places of joy and sorrow, of hope
and struggle, of sin and repentance, of strain or
calm, in which we can sit where others sit, and
grasp their hands in the darkness, or smile with
them in the light. And sympathy is the eyes of
love. It is by its vision alone that we can fulfill
towards each other Christ's law of love, "Thou
shalt love they neighbour as thyself."

I. In the first place, it is only by sympathy
that we can form a true judgment of one another.
Look at this experience of the Prophet Ezekiel.
We are told that Ezekiel was fitted to be God's
messenger to these backsliding, idolatrous Jews
of the Captivity. First, he receives his message ;
then he is exempted from delivering it. He is
equipped, first, with a fearless spirit. They are
hard men, brazen-faced sinners to whom he is
sent. And he goes forth armed with burning
indignation to meet their anger and scorn, his
face strong against their faces, his forehead
against their foreheads. Assuredly they would
hear the truth from the Prophet's lips. He will
pour it out upon them like burning lava. But
when he arrives and meets these people face to
face, somehow he cannot carry out his pro
gramme. Instead of instantly launching out
upon them the thunderbolts of condemnation,
he went down to them gently, and dwelt with

59

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

them by the River Chebar. He sat where they
sat, listened to their talk, saw the manner of
their life; and as more and more he appreciated
their difficulties and temptations, their miseries
and distress — as more and more the story of their
lives, the secrets of their hearts became an open
book to him, his temper became strangely
changed. He sat among them in silence, filled
with conflicting emotions. His fiery invectives
of fierce denunciation were forgotten. For
seven days he could not open his mouth. And,
when at length utterance came back, he spoke
out, not as a Sultan's ambassador denouncing a
horde of rebels, but as one who had crept into
the very hearts of those he had wished to help.
Before Ezekiel sat down where they sat, he
summed them up in one word as apostates-
idolaters. But now, he saw them rather as the
lost sheep of the House of Israel to be wooed
back to the fold. You can never judge righteous
judgment except in the atmosphere of sympathy.
You are never competent to judge any man until
you try to put yourself in his place, and have
sat where he sits. And the longer I live, the
more clearly do I see that the harsh, contemptu
ous verdicts we so often pass upon our fellow
creatures, are, for the most part, due to deficient
knowledge. The man we have thought mean,
had obligations — others depending on him we

60

THE POWER OF SYMPATHY

had not heard of. The man we thought surly,
had some physical malady setting his nerves on
edge, or has gone through seas of struggle which
would have overwhelmed a man less masterful.
The man we thought weak, has struggled harder
perhaps than ever we have done; and much of
what we have thought positive evil in him, was,
in reality, baffled, defeated goodness. And even
the criminal! Could we sit where he has sat,
we would see how slender often times have been
his chances of becoming anything else, of how
by one false step, perhaps, he has become
entangled in a net of evil circumstances, from
which he has never had the force of will to
wrench himself free. We may well question
whether we ourselves, if in his place, would
have come off victorious. No ! We are not com
petent to judge anyone until we have sat where
he sits. And the truth is, that we can never
wholly do that. There was only One Who could
— Jesus Christ. He knew what was in man, all
the good and all the evil, the strength and the
weakness, knew the history of every man's
struggle and defeat. And that is what makes
the judgments of Jesus Christ often so strange
and unexpected. Even when men were ham
mering the spikes through His hands and feet,
He put Himself in their place, and said,
"Father, forgive them for they know not what

61

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

they do." And, judging with perfect know
ledge and sympathy he declared that the publi
cans and harlots would pass into the Kingdom
of Heaven before those who accounted them
selves the salt of the earth, whose hearts were
filled with the pride of self-righteousness, the
venom of censorious judgment. Yes! That was
one of the greatest evils in the eyes of Jesus
Christ — unsympathetic, censorious, ruthless
judgment of others. It is one of the greatest
evils. It not only reveals an evil heart, it does
a great deal to embitter the relations of men and
classes to one another, and to exasperate their
difficulties. There is scarcely anything, I think,
that would do more to sweeten and clarify the
atmosphere in which human life, with all its
struggle of interests, and clash of opinion, and
antagonism of will, must be carried on, than
that we should honestly believe, what is true,
that our fellowmen, even our opponents, are,
for the most part, as well-intentioned as our
selves.

II. But further, sympathy is the great sol
vent of such antagonisms. We are so sure of
our own point of view, and so blind to our
brother's, so eager to insist upon our own, and so
unwilling to take pains to understand his, that
we are in danger of forgetting that every ques
tion that is a subject of debate must have two

62

THE POWER OF SYMPATHY

sides; in danger of forgetting that those who
take a different view of it, have eyes as well
as we, presumably are honest and reasonable as
well as we, and have some truth on their side as
well as we on ours. So the evil works in private
life. When there is estrangement between hus
band and wife, or between parent and child, or
separation of friends, it is generally because each
sees his own rights and wrongs and is determined
to insist upon them, and not to see the rights
and wrongs of the other. And then, "Behold
how great a matter a little fire kindleth!" In
the atmosphere of sympathy that fire could never
be kindled, and in that atmosphere it would
quickly die. How surely and swiftly would
soreness and suspicion be swept away were
we just say to each other frankly and ten
derly: "There is something wrong between us,
and we do not understand each other. I
need to sit where you sit; you need to sit where
I sit. Tell me the whole of your case as you
see it and I shall tell exactly how it appeals to
me, and laying our two heads and hearts
together, we shall no doubt kill any root of
bitterness." Yes! If we wouldst cross over into
each other's place in some such manner as that,
we should make a sweeter and better world of
it. For we really have a little human love for
each other, if it were only allowed fair play.

63

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

But it is in regard to the different classes in a
community that the need of an atmosphere of
sympathy is most acute. They are not natural
enemies. They have all the greatest common
interests, thoughts and feelings in common.
They ought to be united in co-operation, trust
and good will. And what is it, then, that so often
creates conditions the opposite of this? Gross
inhuman selfishness? Seldom. Not that — but
the inability, or the unwillingness to look at the
other side. The toiler knows where he sits,
knows the weary confinement of his daily task,
the weary monotony of everlastingly doing the
same thing without variety or excitement. He
thinks of his small share of the profits — the dif
ference between the employer's house and that
which shelters his wife and children. That is
where he sits. The capitalist or employer sits
in his own seat. He thinks, perhaps, of the
long years of early struggle, hardship, self-
denial which have brought him to his present
position. He thinks of all the responsibilities
and worries which weigh upon him day by day,
keeping him awake at night — of the uncertain
ties and risks which are always a part of his
business — the lean years in which he makes no
profit at all — the endless wear of brain and
nerve. That is where he sits. Each of them
sees his own side of the case, and broods over

64

THE POWER OF SYMPATHY

it, and perhaps neither of them tries to look
honestly and sympathetically at the other. And,
therefore, instead of mutual consideration and
good will, there is mutual distrust, watchful
suspicion, and a slumbering enmity which is
always ready to break out. Brethren, I am not
propounding any easy way of solving the indus
trial problem. I am not saying that it can be
solved off hand merely by sympathy and mutual
goodwill. But I do say, and I have the whole
nature of things and the whole of human experi
ence with me when I say that in no other atmos
phere can it ever be solved — solved in anyway
that is not merely ruin and destruction. Oh,
you can solve it in that way if you will. You
may fight until nothing is left to fight for. You
may even fight until none are left to carry on
the strife. But if we are to make a better world,
and not a worse, to build up and not to destroy,
all classes and conditions must unite in this
effort, and pull together, and this they can do,
only as they seek honestly and patiently to under
stand their right relation one to the other and
each to the whole. That is sympathy. Only in
that atmosphere can all differences be reconciled
in a higher and grander unity.

III. I should like to go further with my
theme, and impress upon you that sympathy is
a condition of all real service to men. You really

65

5

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

help anyone only in the measure that you can
put yourself in his place, and sit where he sits.
The teacher must sit where his pupil sits, the
comforter where the mourner, the succourer
where the tempted, the saint where the sinner.
But let me point rather to the supreme example,
to Whom our thoughts are specially drawn at
this Christmas season. When God would give
His greatest help to men He had to become man
to do it. The Infinite had to come down to our
nature and our experience and sit where we sat.
The word that was God became flesh, and
dwelt among us. There was no other way, even
for God, no other way. The Infinite Love had
to become a human experience. The pity of a
God had to become the sympathy of a man, that
it might touch us and draw us to Himself.
Think how the Lord of Glory came to us and sat
where we sit; how He came as a babe, needing
only a breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
how, amidst the joys, and sorrows, and struggles
of the humble home, and in the daily toil of
the workshop, and in the worship of the Syna
gogue, He began to learn the meaning of life
men live here on earth; how He learned the
art of virtue, by being tempted in all points as
we are; how, when He went forth into the
world, He met all the ills that flesh is heir to—
all poverty and grief, sickness and suffering,

66

THE POWER OF SYMPATHY

He made them His own, as the burden of His
own soul, until on the Cross He descended into
the most abysmal depths, and learned to the
uttermost what suffering is, to the uttermost of
what sin is, to the uttermost of what sorrow and
desolation of soul is, what death can be. It
behooved Him to be made in all points like unto
His brethren. And to what end? That through
Him we might obtain mercy, and find grace to
help; that He may be enough for our every
need ; that His life may touch and flow into ours
at every point, with quickening, with strength,
and with comfort. Let us once more bow before
this Divine Man, Christ Jesus our Lord. Let
us trust Him truly, and bring all our burdens,
and temptations, and sins to Him Who under
stands them all, because He has borne them
all, and is able to deal with them all because he
has conquered them all. But not for this alone
has He sat where we sit, but that we also should
do as He has done. What is the lure of Christ
mas but a fresh call to feel something of that
Christian brotherhood which links us to our
fellowmen, draws sympathy and affection out
anew to those whose faces are always dear, and
out anew on every side; and, if there are
enmities in our lives, to have hearts eager for rec
onciliation; and, if there are needy ones within
reach of our help, to have hearts eager to give

67

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

that help, hearts ready to rejoice with the joyful;
and, if it be so, to weep with them that weep.
Brethren, let this mind be in you and me which
was also in Christ Jesus and we shall help, each
in his own place, to make for ourselves better
souls, and a better world. Not my Christ only-
He is ours — Humanity's close bond — the key to
its vast, unopened prisons.

68

IV.
THE STORY OF A TOUCH

And Jesus said "Who touched me?" When all denied, Peter
and they that were with him said, "Master, the multitude throng
and press you and sayest thou, "Who touched me? And
Jesus said, "Somebody hath touched me, for I perceive that
virtue is gone out of me." — Luke viii: 45-46.

TT HE unique feature in the narrative of this
•*• miracle is that it is the story of a touch, and
a picture of the difference between touching
Christ and thronging Him. Let us look at it.
Our Lord is walking slowly along the streets
of Capernaum in the midst of a crowd of people
pressing him on every side, when suddenly he
stands still and asks, "Who touched me?" A
strange question it seemed under the circum
stances ; and Peter, always ready to speak to the
occasion, naturally enough expressed surprise at
hearing it. But the Master was not to be thus
answered. Someone had touched Him in quite
another way than the casual crowd. In the midst
of that excited and gesticulating mob there was a
silent figure of a fragile woman whose pallid
lips and wasted features were set in a desperate
resolve, her hollow eyes gleaming with sup-

69

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

pressed excitement as she watched for her oppor
tunity, and skilfully threading her way drew,
minute by minute, near to the Master, until,
creeping up behind Him, she is able to dart out a
stealthy hand and touch, only touch, the fringe
of His mantle. He had felt in His very soul
the nervous movement, and somehow He was
conscious of it as a mute appeal to his sympathy
and succour. He knew neither who the suppli
cant was nor what was the trouble, but thrilled
to that touch — the touch of trembling faith.
It unlocked the flood-gates of His pity and His
power, and before even asking what the need
was, He supplied it.

Here, then, is the first difference between the
many who thronged Christ and the one who
touches Him. It is the difference between the
contact of mere vicinity and the touch of deliber
ate purpose and resolve. To the multitude
Jesus was the fashion and excitement of the
hour. To them His doings in the neighborhood
afforded a welcome distraction from the monot
ony of everyday affairs. To the woman it was,
and she knew it was, the crisis of her fate — the
moment when either the cloud which had set
tled upon her life should be lifted, or her fate
henceforth lead through the Valley of the
Shadow. The same difference always exists.
It exists among ourselves. In some fashion we

70

THE STORY OF A TOUCH

all touch Christ, or at least His garment.
Christ's garment sweeps through our world.
Every day— week day and Sabbath day— we are
thrust against it. Born and brought up in
Christian homes, Christ's garment touched you
then. You are brought into contact with it on
your marriage day. At every funeral you have
attended, Christ has been present too, saying, "I
am the Resurrection and the Life." You cannot
travel through a week without meeting Christ
by the way. Every time the Sabbath comes
round and the bells peal out, calling you to His
house, whether you listen to the summons or not,
you are brought into some manner of contact
with Him. You cannot read the best literature,
whether poetry or prose, you cannot listen to the
noblest music, nor look through a picture gal
lery, but the hem of Christ's garment touches
you. Christ's garment is everywhere, in all the
combines of life, the social and religious insti
tutions, the everyday thought and language of
a Christian community, Christ's garment touches
you. You are thrust upon it by the movement
of the crowd that is thronging about the Son
of Man. But how often is this contact, now as
of old, no more than mechanical, unpurposed,
an accident of the time and place! You know
how possible it is to sit through a religious
service, and never once touch Christ — to listen

71

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

to a sermon approving or disapproving it as an
oratorical performance, or even as evangelical
or unevangelical in its tone and teaching, and
never once touch Christ. But it is one thing to
have Christ's garment touching you, and alto
gether another thing for you to touch it. Are we
to-day to be like those who thronged about Him,
doing nothing, expecting nothing, who empty
came and empty went? Or have we come here
that we may obtain something, to have some of
His divine virtue imparted to us? Then will
He be compelled to say this morning again,
"Somebody hath touched Me."

But observe further, the difference between
the thronging of mere interest and the touch of
desperate need. Many in that crowd were there
because drawn by some real interest. They
were patriotically interested in this wonderful
Galilean Prophet who had arisen in their midst,
and made their town famous. Or they were
sympathetically interested in the distress of their
townsmen, Jairus, and his household. Or they
were intellectually interested regarding the
method and the measure of Christ's miraculous
powers: aWould the girl be still alive when He
reached the house? If not, would He Who
healed the sick, be able also to restore the dead,
or have to own Himself baffled?" And it is so
to-day. There is great interest in Christ and

72

THE STORY OF A TOUCH

Christianity. Science has awakened to the dis
covery that the facts of religious experience,
simply as facts, are as worthy a subject of study
and research as the classification of beetles, or
the movements of comets. It is impossible to
think seriously of the problems which axe of the
profoundest significance to the individual and
to the race, impossible to give one's mind seri
ously to the political, and social and interna
tional questions of our day which go down to the
moral basis of human life, without being at least
interested in the light Christ shed upon them.
It is impossible to have any philanthropic regard
for the moral welfare of society, and interest
in the influences which practically mould the
character of men and nations, without recogniz
ing Christianity as the chiefest of these. And,
Brethren, it is a great matter that men should
have even an interest in Christianity. God for
bid that it should be otherwise. Only this is
not — it is not — to touch Christ. To be inter
ested in, even to admire, even to accept Christ
ianity as a view of the universe, as a principle
of morals, as an ameliorative force in the world,
this is not to touch Christ. But think how this
woman touched Him. Hers was the touch of
personal, and even desperate need. How pa
thetic is the tale which the Gospel in its few
words suggests! What a sky of misery over this

73

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

woman's life, broken again and again by gleams
of hope, only to be extinguished again in dark
disappointment! There is not an orthodox
remedy, nor a quack's nostrum she had not tried,
not a pretender to the healing art of whom she
had not become a prey. The sorrows of poverty
were but added to the miseries of chronic disease.
She was not actually dead like the Ruler's little
daughter, but she often wished she was, as she
still dragged out her sad weary life, dying by
inches, help after help failing, hope after hope
kindled only to expire. No mere interest, no
mild attraction for Christ here, but the grasping
at a last resource.

Is this, then, you may ask, a description of
the very process by which everyone must come
to touch Christianity? Must we spend all our
living on other physicians before we come to
the only Physician, or try every other Saviour
before we touch the only Saviour? Thank God,
rather, that with many of us Christ was the first
as He shall be the last. But how often is Christ
the last resource ! The way to the Father's home,
the Father's welcome, is open all the time. But
to arise and go to the Father! — it needs the whip
of starvation to drive the self-willed prodigal
to that. And how often, too, is Christ the last
resource of a good man, of a man struggling
with his sins, trying to maintain his self-respect

74

THE STORY OF A TOUCH

and mend his character! How many of Christ's
most notable servants have been driven by failure
upon failure, and at last total self-despair, to
His feet! If we look at humanity as a whole,
do we not find that Christ stands as the last
resource? The world has always been dissatis
fied with itself, always concerned about its state,
and has tried every authentic remedy, and many
a quack's prescription as well : — Law to sup
press vice and reform external habits and man
ners; science seems to improve the external sur
roundings and equipment of life; philosophy to
lift the mind above the deception of sensuous
things and teach the art of living by Right Rea
son; aesthetics to make men better through the
culture of the senses — by poetry, pictures and
music; the Church to elevate and purify the
emotions with mystic ritual and fervent elo
quence. And when all fail, as they do fail, there
is Christ waiting. So He is waiting to-day.
This modern world has made trial of many phy
sicians. Science, philanthropy, education,
inventions, have been doing their utmost for
man's happiness, health and comfort, for all that
we call progress and civilization. And the ver
dict human history itself is writing is, "Nothing
the better, but rather the worse."

And all the time Christ is patiently, pathet
ically waiting, for the world to come to Him,

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

to take His yoke, to learn of Him the Divine
secret of life, and get from Him the Divine
spirit of life — the transforming power of Love,
the one key to all that is otherwise insoluble,
the path to all that is otherwise impossible,
and the one hope that is still shining above the
darkness of human chaos. Christ is waiting for
the world to come to Him. Will it come?
And all that is true of you and me. There is
only one way really to touch Christ, not neces
sarily as the last resource in time, but as the
only resource in reality. To be done with
everything and everyone else, and to stand like
a beggar with empty, outstretched hands, and
receive the salvation of Christ as the alms of
Love, without money and without price. To
the merely interested, Christ has but little
charm; but to the contrite in heart, to the man
who knows himself, His is the Name that is
above every name.

So it was with this woman. She had lost
her money, which is a very important thing.
She had lost what was more important to her
— health. She had lost what was more impor
tant than either — she had lost hope. And, just
when there seemed to be nothing to look for but
the last stroke of human calamity, some wind
wafted His name her way, some rumor of His
power had reached her, and as she brooded over

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THE STORY OF A TOUCH

what she heard, during many a silent hour, a
great hope stirred once more within her. She
felt sure, If only I might come near Him for
a moment so as to touch the hem of His gar
ment, I shall be made whole. Do you ask how
such a conviction could be accounted for? I say
you cannot account for it. You cannot explain
faith. If you could explain it, it would not be
faith. Faith has a life of its own, a certainty of
its own on other grounds than those of logical
understanding. "My sheep hear My voice and
they follow Me." And this woman had heard
the inward voice in her soul. She had tried
many a physician and experimented with many
a remedy. Now she was not experimenting any
more — she was sure. "If I may but touch Him
I shall be whole." And now on the moment, she
resolved to make the venture. In an instant she
found herself. Though frail as a leaf, fighting
her way through the surging crowd, elbowing
aside strong men until almost before she knew
it, she had, yes, with her thin, bloodless fingers,
she had touched the hem of His garment. And
at that touch, the misery of twelve years was at
and end. A thrill of invigorating delight
thrilled through the feeble frame. Life was
keen again. The very sunshine was brighter
to the eye, and all the world strangely new and
beautiful. The simple touch saved her wholly,
saved her at once.

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

But again, consider the difference between
thronging and touching. It is the difference
between believing and acting. In the crowd
doubtless there were many who believed about
Christ's healing power exactly as this woman
did, and doubtless also there were some who
needed. But they believed only. She believed
and acted. Lay hold of that point, I beg. A
great deal has been said about this woman's
faith. Some speak of the audacity of her faith.
Others speak of the superstition that mingled
with it. No doubt there was a great deal of
that She seemed to think of Christ as a kind
of living electric battery. Yes, her ideas were
crude and superstitious enough, but all that is be
side the point. Whether intelligent or super
stitious, the whole matter is, her faith did some
thing, and did everything that was needed. It
touched Christ. Brethren, it is of little conse
quence what men believe about Christ if it is
only believing about Him, Here we are a con
gregation of orthodox, evangelical people, hold
ing very correct, intelligent views about Christ
and the Christian faith. All that is very good;
but it is not the main thing. It is not the first
thing nor the deepest thing. Behind all that
is this — whether you want to be made a dif
ferent man or a different woman— different
morally and spiritually, as this woman wanted

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THE STORY OF A TOUCH

to be physically. That is the great question.
And I can imagine Christ looking over a con
gregation like this, where we are scriptural and
evangelical, and where the Gospel is preached
Sunday by Sunday, and where there is nothing
superstitious nor ignorant, and seeing in this
congregation, this one here, that one there, who,
with all his orthodox beliefs about Christ, has
no thought or intention of becoming a differ
ent man because of Christ. And I can imagine
Christ looking at some other congregation, in
some land whose inhabitants are grossly super
stitious, and seeing some poor soul who is
filled with silly ideas about beads and holy
water and a hundred other things, but behind
all that a deep willingness and desire to be made
different by Jesus Christ. And I can imagine
the Lord passing over some of us who, with all
our evangelical beliefs, are merely thronging
Him, and have no real intention of being
changed by Him, and giving His blessing to that
ignorant and superstitious soul, as he gave it to
this poor woman, because it touches Him with
its deep inward desire to be changed by Him.
Brethren, Christ is not a creed or a theological
formula. Christ is not a history. It is not what
we believe about Christ that makes us finally
right or wrong, but what we do with Him,
Christ is the Living One: Speak to Him for He

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

hears; Touch Him with your soul; Confess to
Him all your sins, your troubles, and your needs ;
Use Him day by day, that through Him you may
obtain forgiveness of your sins, become better
men and women, holier toward God, more lov
ing toward men. Yes, Brethren, all that we
call religion is just touching Christ's garment,
which He, now throned above, still lets down
within our reach, that we may touch it, and
through it touch Himself.

The Church is Christ's glorious garment,
with its holy fellowship, its solemn worship,
its ministry of word and sacrament, if we come
to it with earnest believing hearts. And when
you come to the Communion Service next Sun
day, I do not care so much to know what your
theology is, or what your view of the sacrament.
The question is: Will you come in order that
your soul may touch Christ there, that you may
be changed yet a little more into His likeness?
Aye, and all the changeful experiences of life,
its joys, its trials, may be to us Christ's garment,
through which we touch Himself and receive of
His fulness,

The healing of His seamless dress,

Is by our beds of pain,

We touch Him in life's throng and press,

And we are whole again.

The Divine Healer is present now. And as
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THE STORY OF A TOUCH

this poor woman represents us in our need, let
her represent us also in our resolve, and in our
act, lest the hem of His garment be swept away
beyond the reach of our hesitating hand.

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V.

STRENGTH FOR THE DAY

As thy days, so shall thy strength be.— Deuteronomy xxiii: 25.

HP HIS is one of the great verses of the Bible.
It is like the well of some ancient times, like
Jacob's well at Sychar, for instance, at which
Jesus sat, and which remains there unto
this day. For four thousand years it has
been giving forth its waters to countless
thirsty lips, Jew and Canaanite, Saracens
and Crusaders, wandering Bedouins of the
desert, pilgrims of every nation under heaven,
all have been there, and from its inexhaustible
depths the well has ministered refreshment to
them all. Little children, labourers, weary trav
ellers have drunk of its waters, and will drink
of them in time to come as in days of old. And
this text is one of God's wells, no less bountiful
and perennial in their flow. God's word is full
of such wells. It is beyond all other books the
Book of Encouragement, full of succour and of
comfort, of all that says to suffering, sorrowing,
struggling men, "Be of good cheer; be not
afraid.': And the Bible is this, because
it looks so straight at sternest realities, the

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

literature of the world often tries to be
exhilarating by ignoring this, or despising
reality. It makes a great play with the
surface happiness of the world. But the
Bible looks the whole difficulty and tragedy of
life full in the face. It comes to us in our weari
ness, our sins, our fears, our despondencies, with
its living words of strength and consolation from
the living God our Father, making us feel that
there is in the universe a heart that beats with
our heart, and that underneath are the Arms of
Everlasting Strength. And all that is exempli
fied in my text, "As thy days, so shall thy strength
be." It is spoken to us as travellers, as those
who are making a journey about which the only
certainty is, that it is not an easy journey but
difficult, and that there is a great deal to over
come by us, much hindrance to every high kind
of resolve and noble purpose,.

1. Let us think, first, how peculiarly indis
pensable is the thing here promised. And, of
course, when we say "indispensable," the ques
tion at once arises, Indispensable for what, to
whom? People who make journeys may be
divided into two classes : Tourists and real trav
ellers; those who journey for pleasure, those
who journey on serious business. And accord
ing to the class to which they belong are their
ideas of what is indispensable. When I cross the

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STRENGTH FOR THE DAY

Atlantic, I am often amused and instructed by
the conversation of some of the passengers. They
talk of little else than the food, the service, the
baths, and the stewards. They compare the ship
they are in, with others they have travelled by.
They prefer the Cunard to the White Star, or
vice versa; and they rather think they will go
by a different line next time. They take a pride
in showing themselves expert in these matters.
Naturally. They are only tourists. They are
tender, finical people who are not out to rough
it. But, for the traveller who has an urgent mis
sion to accomplish, or who has a precious cargo
in the hold, these are matters of little concern.
Seaworthiness is everything to him. It is enough
if the good ship plough her way through flood
and tempest, and, though bearing on hull and
canvas many a mark of conflict with the deep,
bring crew and cargo safe at last to the desired
haven. And so, Brethren, it makes all the differ
ence as to what we reckon indispensable, wheth
er we are making the journey of life only as
tourists, or as travellers on serious business, who
have a goal to reach, long distances to traverse,
and unknown difficulties and dangers to over
come before it can be gained.

There are many good things which, at a
pinch, such a traveller can do without. There
are Divine gifts which are very desirable and

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

very thankworthy, which, for a time at least, we
can do without. God does not promise us as
tourists provision, pleasantness, joy, and comfort
at every stage. These are great blessings, and
God grants them, yet not indispensable. But if
we are travellers with a serious purpose, if we
are to run right on to the end the race that is
set before us, if we are to surmount every ob
stacle, reach the goal of our faith and aspira
tions, the one thing we do need, and can never do
without, is strength — strength of courage,
strength of patience, strength of endurance to the
end. We must go from strength unto strength,
until we appear before the God in Zion. I am
afraid that many of us, even Christians, do not
realize this. We have too much of the tourist's
concern about our comforts — our spiritual com
forts — by the way. Instead of just seeking first
the Kingdom of God, we ask, "What 'spiritual
ly' shall we eat? What shall we drink and
wherewithal shall we be clothed?" We set too
much store by religious luxuries. We put too
much stress on being pleasantly interested; and
our ministers have to prepare highly-spiced, and
cunningly-compounded spiritual dishes to titil
late our jaded palates. "The service this morn
ing was most interesting or uninteresting. I
liked the sermon; I enjoyed it very much."
Really this is tourist talk. We are not, then, to

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STRENGTH FOR THE DAY '

enjoy services and sermons, but to work out our
own salvation, to fight the battles of the Lord.
Does the sermon help you there? Is it real
strengthening food to your soul? That is the
question.

And some are much taken up with their reli
gious feelings and experiences — their sense of
inward repose and happiness. Well, some com
paratively useless people abound in these things,
and some great servants of God have but little.
The first question is, "Have you enough to go
on with?" Jesus was in utter poverty of spirit
when He cried, "My God, my God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me?" but with that cry of God
forsakenness He consummated all sacrifice, and
struck His last blow for the world's salvation.
And so, Brethren, our chief concern is never
with what relates to ease and comfort by the
way, but with what is essential to progress, en
durance to the end. "Blessed is he that over-
cometh." And whether our path be through
the pleasant fields of Beulah, or the deep Val
ley of Humiliation, or up the rugged Hill of
Difficulty, we have need of a Divine strength.
The faith which links us to Jesus Christ, the
resolution which links us to our duty, the hope
that links us to the heaven lying beyond, must
not snap. We must have strength to hold on,
and to hold out to the end.

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

II. Look next at the manifold sufficiency
of the promise — as thy days. Now days have
different characters and bring with them their
every day needs. The strain of life shifts from
time to time; the strength which suffices to-day
would not avail for to-morrow. As in building
one of these great bridges like those that span
the St. Lawrence, the engineers must provide
strength adequate to resist every strain ; strength
vertically to carry the enormous loads that
are hauled over it; strength laterally that it
may stand unshaken by the fiercest winds that
blow; strength of material and foundation to
sustain the weight of the whole vast structure,
so do we in the course of our days need various
kinds of spiritual strength. Sometimes it is
strength of righteousness — of unyielding con
scientious principle, that we may stand unmoved
by the world's temptations, its threats, or its
seductions. Sometimes strength of patient trust
ful endurance, to sustain us under the crush
ing load of grief or pain. And sometimes
strength of active fortitude, to cleave our way
through the opposition of circumstances — "the
power to steer right onward without bating jot
of heart or hope" — the strength of the traveller
who holds on his way, though the sleet is dash
ing on his face, or the snow is gathering deep
around his feet. And, always, it is strength of

STRENGTH FOR THE DAY

faith and hope, to resist and neutralize the soul
-corroding power of the world's fears and
troubles — its great troubles and petty troubles,
alike. And so in all needful fulness and variety,
strength is promised, if we seek it at the right
source. If, I say, we seek it at the right source.
Where is that? It is nq,t in nature. Sometimes
you see a man who seems the type of self- suffic
ing strength. You see him in the prime of his
mental power, and physical vigor, to all appear
ance fully equipped for the battle of life — with
all the powers that laugh at difficulty and
danger. You see him plant his feet firmly on
the first rounds of the ladder by which he means
to climb to high achievement and brilliant suc
cess. But, see him some stages further on, and
what is it we sometimes behold? A man who
is perhaps a living sacrifice to the world, its
driven, care-worn slave: Or, on the other hand,
swollen and intoxicated with success — in either
case, the victim of the world he meant to conquer.
Or, you see him near the end of his race, when
he has achieved much perhaps of what he set out
to reach, a querulous, discontented old man,
chafing under his infirmities, holding on weakly
and miserably to a world with which he shall
soon have no further concern. The proverb
says, "Beginnings are difficult." Surely, not
always. Beginnings are often easy, splendid,

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

most promising. But how much oftener in this
world, do we see promising beginnings than
victorious endings? "I have seen the thorn
frown rudely all the winter long and after bear
a rose upon its top, and the bark that all the way
across the sea ran straight and speedy perish at
the last, even in the hajbour's mouth." A day
will always come, it may come early in life, it
may come late, it may not come till death,
or till after death, it may come at any time,
it will come some time, which will try a man
down to the foundation, and which, if a man
have not laid hold of the Lord Almighty and
His strength, will discover the flaw in him
and break him down — a day in which it would
seem that only the strength of God's love and
righteousness can suffice, and in which every
life that is not rooted and grounded in that,
will be seen to have ended in moral failure and
collapse.

I put it to you especially, younger people,
what is your confidence in looking forward to
the great enterprise of life on which you have
embarked? There are hindrances and dangers,
far more than you can know of. From within
is our great weakness, greater than we know,—
our irresolution and vacillation, our ease-loving,
pleasure-loving, lower nature, dragging all the
time against our higher purposes and better self.

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STRENGTH FOR THE DAY

The path of duty will often be hardest when
it is clearest, and will lead you into places where
it needs a strong and patient heart to go. And
yet, some of you, perhaps, ask hesitatingly,
"Can I consent to carry the yoke of Christ all
my life through?" Surely the question you ought
to ask is a different one, "Can Christ carry
me through? Can He bear my burden and
strengthen my weakness and keep me so that I
shall not make shipwreck, but that as my days,
so shall my strength be?" And to that question
there is but one answer from all who put Him
to the proof. The only always sufficient, always
available, power in the universe for all the needs
of a man's soul, for labour, for obedience, for
submission, for hope, for courage, for endurance
unto the end, is the power of Jesus Christ, which
was constantly manifested in His life on earth,
which was victoriously manifested in His life
on earth, and which He imparts according to
their need, and according to their trust, to all
who seek to follow in His steps.

III. Think of some of the "days" which
come in every life, and of the strength that is
needed for them, more in the day of toil, of hard
and wearing, and it may be irksome labour.
"So shall thy strength be." He, who never,
grew weary in well-doing, never faltered in His
great life-task, till he could lay it down at His

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

Father's feet saying, "It is finished"— He, if He
is our strength, will never fail you, till you too lay
down your task at the Master's feet, and say,
"Such as it is, needing much forgiveness for its
blemishes and short-comings, it is finished." The
day of temptation will come. Only let it, when
it comes, find us praying, "Lead us not into
temptation." He who in the wilderness met
every attack with the Word of God, will give to
us also such an answer to our souls and hold us
fast by some principle of eternal truth, from
which no temptation will be able to drag us.
The day of trial and sorrow. He will give
strength for that day too. He who yonder in the
garden overcame nature's utmost agony, who
bore the Cross that was weighted with all the
load of the world's evil, shall He not give that
strength which is made perfect in weakness—
that last utmost strength to say: "The cup which
my Father hath give me, shall I not drink it?"
"Strengthened with all might, according to 'His
glorious power, unto all patience and long-suf
fering." For what is strength according to
God's glorious power? To take kingdoms, over
throw strongholds, perform Herculean tasks?
No, it is not in such things that the full strength
of God is manifested, but in the patience and
long-suffering of Christian men and women.
Marvellous, is it not? — that God seeks no such

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STRENGTH FOR THE DAY

exalted mission for the glorious power of His
Spirit than just that some lone woman may stay
her heart in patience, some suffering man con
quer his afflictions by patience, that you and I
may do our duty and resist our temptations, and
be uncomplaining and cheerful under all the
vexations and frictions of daily life, as well as
under the greater afflictions and sorrows that
may come to us. And, to sum up all in that all
inclusive promise, I take you back to the thought
with which we started. We are travellers,—
travellers into the unknown : but there is a staff
for our pilgrimage on which our souls can lean.
Here, amid all uncertainties, is the light of a
great certainty shining on our path, like the
gleaming of harbour lights across dark waters.
"As thy days, so shall thy strength be." Going
forth like Abraham of old, not knowing whither
we go, but knowing Him who is our guide and
strength, we may say:

I see my way, as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first,

I ask not

In good time, His good time, I shall arrive.
He guides me and the birds.

Live for Christ's ends. Commit thy way unto
the Lord, and He shall bring it to pass. He who
upholds all things by the word of His power,
He will uphold thy soul.

93

VI.

THE CHRISTIAN RACE— HOW TO
RUN IT

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a
cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin
which doth so easily best us, and let us run with patience the
race that is set before us. — Hebrews xii: 1.

'"THERE are passages in the New Testament
•*• which might suggest that the Christian life
is an easy and simple matter. It is represented
as a natural progress. It is just to grow in grace.
Our Lord Himself compares it with the natural
growth of a plant: — first the blade, then the ear,
then the full corn in the ear. What could be
easier or more inevitable? Then, there are other
passages which, like my text, represent it as a
matter of serious difficulty — difficult at the be
ginning: we must strive to enter in at the straight
gate ; and growing no less difficult as it advances :
we must take up our cross, fight a good fight, or,
as here, run with concentrated purpose, and with
enduring patience the race that is set before us.
Ought we to conclude, then, that the Christian
life is easy for some, difficult for others? Or,
that it is sometimes easy, sometimes difficult, for
everyone? On the contrary, both of these di-

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

verse representations are necessarily true, more
or less, for everyone, more or less all the time.
In fact, they are both necessarily true of every
kind of life. Look at the growth of a plant.
What can be more effortless, and spontaneous!
Give it the necessary conditions of soil, atmos
phere and temperature, and all is done by
natural process. And yet that plant is fighting
for its life all the time. Fighting grubs, para
sites and insect pests; fighting the weeds around
it for air and sunshine, fighting frost, perhaps,
and drought and storm. Could the plant speak,
it would say that all the time it is fighting a hard
fight, running a race for its very life. So it is
with the Christian life. Rooted in Christ, re
freshed by the means of grace, quickened by the
Holy Spirit, surrounded by the influences of the
Kingdom of God, it grows by no effort of its
own, but simply by absorbing the Divine ele
ments in which it moves, and lives and has its
being. Yet, from first to last it has strong antag
onisms to overcome. Not a step is won without
faithful effort. Its very growth is by warfare.
Perhaps we may sum up the truth of the matter
thus : in view of the things that are for us — the
forces on our side — the Christian life seems, and
is easy; in view of the things that are against, it
seems, and is difficult. In view of the fact that
the things that are for us, are greater than the

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THE CHRISTIAN RACE

things that are against us, it is always possible,
and its victory certain, if we are faithful and
resolute. Now, the writer of the Epistle gives a
vivid idea of all this under the figure of a race.
He sees the competitors preparing for the race,
laying aside all superfluous clothing, every en
cumbrance that might hinder speed or overtax
endurance. He sees them panting and straining
onward, while the assembled spectators cheer on
their favourite runner, or wait in breathless sus
pense as the climax of the contest is reached, and
a final spurt decides the victory. And he makes
all this do service in stimulating Christians to
run the race. It may seem strange that Chris
tians should need thus to be exhorted and spurred
on. It might have been thought that it would be
necessary rather to hold us in to moderate our
zeal. It might have been predicted that the
faults of Christians would be chiefly faults of
excess, that they would strive after ideal excel
lence, until they became quixotic and unprac
tical.

Last Sunday morning we tried to lay to heart
one of our great encouragements. We are not
the first runners in the race. We are compassed
about with a great and ever-growing cloud of
witnesses. We run our race ideally, perhaps
actually, under the eyes of that great victorious
host. Let us consider this evening how we are
to run it.

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7

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

In the first place, take the general idea. We
are to lay aside. We are assured of this, that we
can run well only by laying aside. That is ele
mentary enough. Why, even to run an im
promptu race at a picnic, a man lays aside his
coat, loosens his collar and tie, and flings them
on the ground. And that is a kind of symbol of
life. Look, and you will see that always pro
gress is possible only by laying aside. "When I
was a child," says St. Paul, "I thought as a child
and spake as a child. When I became a man I
put away childish things." Youth lays aside the
habits of childhood, and mature manhood those
of youth. So it is in all progress we make in the
pursuit of truth. Any real progress in knowl
edge, any grasp of higher truth, is marked by
the laying aside of some opinions and prejudices,
and of our pride in them, or indolent satisfaction
in them. So it is with our moral progress. It
means not only, perhaps, the laying aside of some
bad habit, the conquering of some disposition,
but the laying aside of a lower point of view by
rising to a higher. This laying aside in order to
progress is also the law of industrial progress.
The mill may be filled with expensive machin
ery, but the progressive manufacturer does not
hesitate to scrap it, if something more effective is
invented. Candles are laid aside for lamps,
lamps for gas, gas for electric light, electric

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THE CHRISTIAN RACE

light for some better illuminant. And the man
or community that will not conform to this law
of laying aside will, as all acknowledge, be left
inevitably, hopelessly behind in the race.

One of our great needs to-day is efficiency;
and everyone is familiar with the principle that,
in ordinary matters, efficiency is only possible by
laying aside. If you want to do anything pre
eminently well, you must prepare to leave some
other things undone. The way of efficiency is
narrow, and it is impossible for any one to drive
in it a larger team than there is room for. There
are few of us, I imagine, who, as life goes on, do
not feel it increasingly necessary to prune the
tree, that it bear less foliage and more fruit

And that is the truth which the Epistle seeks
to bring home to us here, All the progress, all
the efficiency in the Christian life, are subject to
this same condition of laying aside. Either
there is that which you must lay aside in order to
begin running the race at all, or if you are run
ning there is something which the heat of the
race will compel you to lay aside. I believe it to
be absolutely true, then, that every new step you
win, is marked by some laying aside. Any real
progress in Christian understanding, any full
insight into the truth as it is in Jesus, require the
laying aside of some preconceived, perhaps some
very cherished, opinion. For every step of pro-

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

gress in Christian character, there will be the
laying aside of some inclination, habit, disposi
tion, or point of view. In every course of strenu
ous service in God's kingdom we enter, there will
be the laying aside of some inferior interest.
And, as the track of a fugitive might be followed
by the garments and accoutrements he has been
compelled to cast away in his flight, so the
earnest Christian's course might be traced by
the sins and weights laid aside, left behind, as he
presses to the goal.

So far, the general idea is clear. But when
we seek the exact meaning of the terms in which
it is expressed, we find ourselves on more debat
able ground. The encumbrances we are
directed to lay aside, are of the kind described as
weights and sins. We are to lay aside the sin that
doth so easily beset us — literally the "sin that
stands well around us" — that clings closely to us,
and impedes our movements. Just as to come to
the starting point wearing the toga, the long flow
ing robe which was the ordinary dress in ancient
times, would have been simply to make the race
ridiculous, so, for one to pretend to run the
Christian race without laying aside sin, is to
show that he does not take it in any serious sense.
It would be like the sack-race which you have
seen boys running, and which is meant to be a
mere farce. Sin must be laid aside. Otherwise

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it will trip you up, or, like a clinging garment,
paralyze your efforts at every step.

For, it is not one sin that is here spoken of,
— not one particular besetting sin, according to
the common understanding of the word. It is
sin in general, — the thing we call sin in whatever
form it takes, that bests us, compasses us about,
and must be laid aside. And yet, the common
interpretation of the word is practically right.
For most people, sin means especially A sin.
Our allegiance to good is not tested by all the
Ten Commandments, but usually by one or two.
We do not fight the whole Philistine host. A
Goliath steps out and challenges us. It may be
pride, it may be passion, it may be envy, it may
be an unforgiving, rancorous heart, it may be
sensual appetite, it may be covetousness and
greed. By the single sin men are slain, and in
smiting this Goliath the day is theirs.

Men sometimes flatteringly estimate them
selves by the enumeration of the sins with which
they are not chargeable. They thank God they
are not as other men. A case of scandalous com
mercial dishonesty is brought to light, and
straightway men draw themselves up and say,
"Thank God, I am not like that. I have always
been straight." A man whose language is foul
and whose heart fouler, makes his boast that he
is energetic and industrious, and thanks God

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that he is not like that lazy loafer. The prodi
gal, wasting his substance, and throwing away
his soul in riotous living, thanks God that he is
not a hypocrite or a money grub. By such nega
tives we can make ourselves out to be well on the
way to perfection. But, that is all beside the
point. The question is : Is a man laying aside the
sin that is his sin?

In mechanics, nothing is stronger than its
weakest part. A chain is no stronger than its
weakest link; a ship no stronger than its weakest
plate. In the wrar just now, the opposing forces
are not in a perpetual death-grapple all along
the line; but all the time they are putting out
feelers, probing and testing at this point and
that, to discover, if possible, the weak spot in the
enemy's defense. So it is in character. Life
brings its pressure to bear upon the weak point.
Never mind about the strong point. How about
the critical place where you are especially assail
able? Are you keeping the enemy out there? If
it be so, if our weak places are indeed being
made strong, we may indeed rejoice. But, be
sure, that without laying aside the sin that be
sets, there is no real running of the race, and that
we can never attain to unity of purpose and
effort. Surely nothing more needs to be said. If
any man will run the Christian race, he must lay
aside whatever he knows to be wrong. And we

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are compassed about with a great cloud of wit
nesses who all tell us, that by seeking and trust
ing the help of God, it can be done; who tell us,
too, that to conquer here, is indeed to be more
than conquerors ; that sin subdued becomes glory
and strength; that the frailty and failure of
nature overcome, are the brightest jewel of the
victor's crown.

But another class of encumbrances is to be
laid aside, — here described as weights. And.
indeed, a Christian's danger seldom comes
from things that are positively and patently
wrong. To the great majority of us, it is no
great self-denial not to drink, and gamble,
or to give a wide berth to coarse pleasures and
degrading company. In the majority of cases,
the things which prevent men from becoming
Christians, and which most of all hinder the
progress of those who are Christians, are things
that in themselves, and in their own place are
harmless, nay, useful and good. And if we ask,
what are the things, that thus may become weights
and hindrances, we ask a question which in one
sense it is easy to answer : and in another sense im
possible. It is easy, for one word answers it — any
thing, everything. As human ingenuity can dis
til poison from God's fairest flowers, so there is
a mysterious power we all possess of perverting
the best things God has given us, whether of soul

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or circumstance. It may be our work or our
necessary business, or our pastimes and social en
gagements. It may be our bodily appetites, and
habits, or our intellectual tastes and pursuits.
It may be even our home and our dearest affec
tions — anything, everything.

And so there are weights which we obviously
cannot, and are not meant to lay aside. And the
idea of race is not, after all, an exhaustive idea of
the Christian life. To make it so is the way to
madness. I was reading last week the story of a
Roman noble in the fifth century, one Paulinus,
who suddenly gave up all his estates, all his pub
lic functions and duties, to bury himself in a
hermitage. In one of his letters, still extant, this
Paulinus highly praises a certain Christian lady,
because she totally neglected her own children
in order exclusively to devote herself to the reli
gious life. To such a diseased extravagance of
folly does the idea lead, that the less we have to
do with anything except religion, the more reli
gious shall we be. No! It is a poor business
which cannot find occupation for all its hands.
A religion which does not provide for all the
interests of our nature, and interests of our life,
is a poor, crippled religion. Such a religion
Christianity is not. A good Christian is not one
who is good in a vacuum. He is good all the
time; good in business; a good citizen; a good

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patriot; good in all the relations of life. The
idea of a race, I repeat, is not an exhaustive idea
of the Christian life. That is the one big mis
take of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, wonderful
book as it is. No! We are not mere racing
yachts ; we are ships meant to carry a cargo ; and
what we need is not so much a lighter cargo as
stronger engines. "I will run the way of Thy
Commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my
heart," says the Psalmist. God give us that—
the larger, stronger, more loving heart. Then
our necessary weights will only steady us; our
daily work become a path, in which we walk
even as Christ walked, and all our natural ties,
duties, pleasures and enjoyments, draw our hearts
to God in love and thankfulness.

Nevertheless we must lay aside every weight
that can be rightly laid aside if it hinders pro
gress. When we are perfect, nothing will be a
weight to us. But we have to serve God in our
present actual state. We have to serve Him
with limited means, with limited time, and, alas,
also, with limited love. And the one secret of
success for people with limited resources is con
centration. And as we have to do everything
in this world with limited resources, the key to
life is concentration; and the bane of life is in-
discriminateness. Every flight of wild geese in
the sky tells you the power that secures the maxi-

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

mum of motion, with the minimum of expendi
ture. // is the wedge. And we all know that a
man must make himself a wedge, if he wants to
make his way in the world. He must be firm
where others are movable. He must narrow
himself to the force of a compact purpose, and
so drive his way, wedge-like, through the crowd
of people who have no compact purpose. Wheth
er it is worth a man's while to narrow himself
to a wedge for such a purpose, is a different
question. But it is the secret of power— one
secret at least. It has been Germany's secret.
We blame Germany for concentrating on mili
tarism. Our one national fault was, that we did
not concentrate sufficiently on that, or anything
else. The great lesson and benefit of the war
will have been lost upon us, unless it give deeper
unity, and purpose, and driving power to our
national and individual life. We must stop
drifting, and think more clearly, and more and
more steadily. The Empire needs this. We
need to have a clearer vision of what the goal of
Empire is; what meaning and character we want
it to possess. The Church needs it. We all need
it, in order to unify our conceptions of the main
purpose of the life we have to lead, so that, lay
ing aside every weight we may run the race set
before Empire, Church, and each of us.

Now, I shall not attempt to set forth in detail
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THE CHRISTIAN RACE

the things which may be our weights and hind
rances in running the Christian race. As I said,
that is a question which it is impossible to
answer. No man can tell us how to live, except
in a general way. Our own experience tells us.
When we sit dowrn at a repast we know what
things are good for us, what we should leave un
touched, or partake of with caution. Others
about us may indulge where we cannot; or we
may where they cannot. Experience teaches us.
provided that we desire to learn. No man can
lay down rules for another. And so it is in the
Christian life. Here, to quote one of our wisest
teachers, here is the ennobling peculiarity of
Christianity. It puts us in charge of ourselves.
It lays on us the task of judging what is good for
us. But this freedom, while it ennobles and edu
cates, leaves on us a heavy responsibility. It ex
pects us to be true, to be watchful, to work out
our own salvation. Is our Christian life always
having the upper hand? Is it the great, main
stream, drawing all other streams, as tributary,
unto itself, and giving them its own colour, fed
by them and absorbing them? That is the test.
And, surely, my Brethren, it behoves us to see
that it is the best that becomes dominant with us,
that our life gathers its forces around the one
thing worthy of them all, — the service of Jesus
Christ, our Saviour and King, the race, to run

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which, is to live righteously, soberly, and holy in
this present world, to finish which, is to attain to
the perfect everlasting good. Dear Brethren, let
us on this Communion Sunday, once more re
solve to make God's aim for us our own. We are
to run the great race. We are to run it encom
passed with a great cloud of witnesses. We are
to run it looking unto Jesus, and looking unto
Him, we are to run it with patience, laying aside
every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset
us. This is the sublime life God sets before
every one of us. Shall we not set it before our
selves? Sure that if we have to lay anything
aside, it will be only that which it is not good
for us to keep, and that if we have to lay aside
some things that we might desire to keep, Christ
will give us a hundredfold better, sure, too, that
such laying aside is the shortest, the surest, and,
indeed, the only way to the possession of all
things. May He incline and strengthen our
hearts unto this, for His own Name's sake!
Amen.

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LIFE BUILDING

Every man's work shall be made manifest; for the day shall
declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall
try every man's work of what sort it is.

If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he
shall receive a reward.—/ Corinthians Hi: 13, 14.

VV7E are all builders — on one foundation or
another — in one fashion or another. We are
all certainly building. Sometimes we speak of
a man as having been the architect of his own
fortunes. He has shaped his own course, made
his own opportunities, to himself belongs the
praise or the blame attaching to what he has
made of his life. But it is only in a comparative
and limited sense that this can be said of any
man's worldly career. It is far truer to say that
what every man builds is himself; that every
man is the architect of his own character, and of
all that flows out of and gathers around his char
acter. And while all are building, we are doing
many things. The one thing we are doing all
the time, is the making of the building of life
itself. We do not get ourselves ready-made, but
we get material out of which we are destined to
build up the ultimate self. And as out of the

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

same quarry one may build a temple and another
a prison, so do men build their lives out of their
environment, as the lily and the rose build up a
shrine of fragrance and beauty out of the same
sort of atmosphere and sunshine which furnish
the nettle and the thistle only with stings and
prickles. Brethren, that is what the world really
is. It is the environment of the soul. Our cir
cumstances, our work, our play, our relations to
our fellowmen, the home, the church, the State,
the vicissitudes of life, all are just material for
life-building — the clay out of which the Potter
shapes the vessel according to His will. All the
materials, the gold, silver, precious stones, also
the wood, hay, stubble are placed within our
reach. But these take the form we give them.
We are the builders. That is essential to the idea
of man as a spiritual being. That is the mark of
man's greatness — that he is the architect and
builder of himself. In this consists the serious
ness and responsibility of life. A famous philos
opher has said, "Wouldst thou attain unto thy
highest, go, look upon a flower. What it does
without a will, do thou willingly." So do we as
spiritual beings, in our environment of earthly
conditions and elements, build up a structure
which is to last forever — the structure of life, of
character, of the self.

And consider for a moment, further, what is
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implied in the idea of building that makes it
truly descriptive of human life. Building is a
process, gradual, continuous, progressive, cumu
lative — a process of addition. You are always
doing new work, but upon the basis of the old
work. What is built to-day, is laid upon what
was built yesterday. So it is in our life. We do
not make each day a fresh beginning, nor do we
make each year a fresh beginning. There is no
absolutely fresh beginning. Our days, our years,
our activities, as we live them, are not like beads
on a string. They are links in a welded chain.
They are not like stones set down side by side in
the ground which may afterwards be put in posi
tion. They are built on top of one another — row
upon row. Ah! seldom do we realize what a
connected, continuous growing our whole life is;
how the feelings we cherish become dispositions;
how the words we speak, the silent deeds we do,
become settled habits. And ceaselessly, cease
lessly, as the heart beats, the life-building is go
ing forward — the spiritual fabric is rising, and
coming always nearer to its final form.

Let us listen, then, to St. Paul with regard to
this building. First he tells us that for any hope
ful life-building there must be a right founda
tion. For this, he asserts, there is only one
Foundation, Christ, the eternal Christ. And I
do not think there could be a better expression of

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

what Christianity is, alike in faith and practice,
than to say that it is building one's life upon
Christ. What is it. to build one's life upon
Christ? Well, it does not mean, in the first
place, accepting certain dogmatic propositions
about Christ. In the first place, I would say, it
is to accept Christ's interpretation of life. It is
to have Christ's view of what life is — to mean
what He means by it. If we are to live co
herently at all, and not simply be whirled about
like dead leaves on a gusty day, we must get hold
of some principle of living; must get beneath the
changing aspect of things, to something on which
we can rest as eternal truth. Life is the thing all
men want to build, and in their blundering way
are trying to build. But what is life? How does
it fulfill itself? About this every man has his
own idea, at least his own instinctive feeling.
Prodigal enjoyment, the prodigal will say; de
cent comfort, the elder brother will say; ambi
tion, adventure, wealth, power, others will say;
work, achievement, doing things, another. No !
Christ says it is none of these. A man may gain
all these, and lose his real life. Some of these
things are outside a man; life is within. Some
of these things are merely animal; life is spirit
ual; life is divine. It is what men have in com
mon with God. Life is truth, purity, goodness.
Life is love. Brethren, do we thus build on

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Christ? Do we entirely accept Christ as what
St. John calls "The Word of Life"— the true In
terpretation of life? Do we accept the spiritual
meaning of life, and love as its universal secret?
Do we believe with Jesus Christ that if we love
one another, God dwelleth in us, and we in
Him? Do we believe in Christ so as to desire
Him as our chief good, to be what He is in spirit
and character? Then, so far, we make Christ
the foundation of our life-building.

But we who are weak and sinful need, not
only a rock of faith on which to build — we need
the rock of salvation. I have said that in build
ing there is never a fresh start. But in our life-
building we do want fresh starts. We want to
make a fresh start, some of us, with this New
Year. We want to make a fresh start every new
day. And we cannot begin afresh, just as we are.
No! What we have built well or ill we have
built. Our past clings to us; it demands its
rights. No more than the undischarged bank
rupt can begin to build up a fortune, can we,
just as we are, begin to build up our true life and
our true life work in God's sight. You cannot
build properly upon debt, Our Father, forgive
us our debts. This is our need — a power to de
liver us from the past — a power to lift us above
ourselves, and strengthen us with all might. We
need One who will look with infinite mercy on

113

8

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

our failures, Who will have boundless patience
with our weaknesses and stupidities, Whose love
will endure all things, hope all things for us,
and never fail, and to trust Jesus Christ for all
this. All that is needed to begin, continue, and
accomplish our ideal — nay, higher far. His
ideal for us. That is to build our life upon Him.
Trust in Christ's interpretation of life, and trust
in Him as the hope and strength of sinful man,
seeking to attain that life, — both are included
when St. Paul says, "Other foundation can no
man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
But the next thing of which the Apostle
warns us is, that upon this same foundation it is
possible to raise very different sorts of super
structure. Clearly, and frankly, we recognize
that Christian men may make very poor work of
their lives, and even on the divine foundation,
may rear what is incongruous with it, a flimsy,
perishable edifice, wood, hay, stubble; low,
wordly views; crooked, worldly policies; evil
tempers, self-seeking ambitions, self-indulgent
pleasures — all manner of things that are utterly
out of place in that building, that are inspired, :
not by the spirit of Christ, but by the spirit of
the world. For the purpose of illustrating this
principle St. Paul has taken extreme cases, in
fact, impossibly extreme. As the mathematician
for the purpose of illustrating his principle, sup-

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LIFE BUILDING

poses a perfect circle, a perfect square, although
no such thing exists in nature, so St. Paul sup
poses two cases that do not in fact exist — the
Christian builder, who builds nothing but what
corresponds to the Christian foundation; and the
other, who builds nothing that does. What
Christian is there in whose life everything is
gold, silver, and precious stones? And how
could he be in any sense a Christian at all, in
whose building all is wood, hay, stubble? Still,
the question is pressed upon us — how, and what,
we are building — how far Christian aims and
motives inspire us, for instance, in our worldly
calling, in our use of our means, in our citizen
ship, in our social intercourse and home life;
whether there may not be features, perhaps ex
tensive features, of our daily life that are in no
way really Christian, that might far rather be
built on some other foundation than Jesus Christ.
Travellers tell us that in some of the ruined
cities of the East, the few poverty-stricken in
habitants built their wretched sheds against the
massive walls of ancient palaces and temples;
and thus one half of a man's house is marble or
granite, and the other half crumbling clay. And
it is rather with the same grotesque contrast that
many Christian men and women build their
lives. That they are at heart resting on the
divine foundation, that there is some tie of faith

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

and love between them and the Saviour, cannot
be doubted. But what is Christian in their lives
is so mixed and entangled with what is non-
Christian — they have done so little really Chris
tian work, in their own character in the world,
that their lives must be written down as we from
the Christian view of largely abortions and fail
ures.

And what must be the end of this? Such an
one will be himself saved, but his work will per
ish. It will be burned. When Christ comes to
judge and the light of His face is turned upon
the activities of men, the wood, hay and stubble,
everything in which there has not been the spirit
of Christ will be consumed. He who has thus
builded will be himself saved, yet so as by fire.
He will be saved as a man saved, whose house is
burned over his head, or who is stripped of all
his labours, and is barely dragged to safety
through the flames. He does only not make com
plete shipwreck. He scrambles naked to the
shore; but the vessel, the cargo, and all the profit
of the venture, have gone down in the whelming
waves. Now what definite idea had St. Paul in
his mind when he spoke of being saved as by
fire? I do not venture to say. But, take it out
of the language of symbol, and the meaning is
just this — that we may do a life work here, which
has no permanent value and significance. The

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LIFE BUILDING

abjects which we have lived for, the things we
have worked at, have no place in the eternal
3rder. They do not count in the real life build
ing. They have nothing in them but what is of
the world, and, in the end, remain only as the
melancholy cinders of an extinguished fire.
Nothing will come of them except the ugly gap
left — the gap which ought to have been filled
with gold, silver and precious stones. In that
way they count — by the gap left. So St. Paul
warns us we may waste our lives. And remem
ber, it is not mere worldlings he is speaking of.
It is Christian men and women. So we may
throw away immortal powers on what will melt
and disappear like an ice palace, when the thaw
comes, or flare up like a straw-built hovel at the
touch of fire. My brethren, that is the fate of
everything that has not the spirit of Christ in it.
Everything that has Christ in it, lives forever.
Everything that has not Christ in it, dies. This
old world is already crowded with the graves of
dead works, dead empires and civilizations, dead
literature, dead enterprises and achievements,
every kind of dead enterprise of dead men. And
all the activities of the living world to-day — its
empires, its wars and politics, its business, its
literature and sciences, except in so far as they
carry in them the life giving spirit of Christ,
will one day be dead as ancient Nineveh. So, in

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

our own lives. All the self-seeking plans, all the
God-forgetting deeds, all the toil and trouble
which have been taken for merely worldly ends,
the very achievements on which perhaps we have
prided ourselves most, if there is nothing of
Christ in them, will be burned out of the fabric
of our life-building. Would to God that we
might realize this far more than we do! How
much of human toiling and striving; how much
of our own, would be crushed into nothingness
when judged by the verdict of Christ? Gutted
by the Divine Fire, how much of the building
would be left? It is said that in a churchyard in
Germany two tombstones stand side by side. The
epitaph on the one is the simple, single word
"Vergeben"-— forgiven: on the other the single
word "Vergabens" — in vain. For such as the
Apostle here speaks of, both these epitaphs must
be combined. We are forgiven. Their life
energy is largely labour lost. But that is not the
only possibility. Let us look at the brighter
side of this judgment scene. Every man's work
shall abide. Yes! Living here in a transient
world, expending our energies on its affairs, we
do much that will survive time, and death, and
judgment; much that has indestructible value-
by which eternity itself will be enriched. We
build here, within this scaffolding of time, that
which, when the scaffolding is taken down, will

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only stand revealed in its intrinsic beauty and
worth. Yes! If any man's work shall abide, he
shall receive a reward. He shall come rejoicing
in the great harvest day, bringing his sheaves
with him. He shall be welcomed like a richly-
laden vessel to the harbor. He shall find all he
has committed to Christ safely kept against that
day. He shall find it all awaiting him, not as he
gave it, but multiplied with a divine increase,
transmuted with the pure gold of heaven. We
cannot carry our wood, hay, stubble into an
other life. Thank God for that assurance! We
cannot desire to carry on that kind of building
there. But not one precious stone of Christ-like
act which you have built into your life, not one
particle of the gold and silver of lowly en
deavour and self-sacrificing service, will be lost.
The fires that consume all else, will only reveal
in its true character, all that belongs to Jesus
Christ — everything wrought in love, obedience,
and loyalty to Him. You do not know how
glorious your fidelity will then appear; you do
not guess what recognition your humble service
will receive. "Lord, when saw we Thee an hun
gered and fed thee; and thirsty and gave Thee
drink?" Ye builded better than you knew. He
will say, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of
one of these, ye did it unto Me." And many
whom the world in its blindness classes among

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

the lower orders, and whose life-work it never
notices or hears of, will, in that day when all
values are rightly judged, be found to have been
right skilful workmen ; while the work of others,
though it has bulked largely in the world's eye,
will be found to have possessed no enduring
quality. My brethren, the years roll on, and, as
they roll, remind us that the night cometh when
no man can work. We must work. But at what
ever our hand findeth to do? No, not that; not
whatever your hand findeth to do. You must
select. Indiscrimination is the bane of life. To
build, wood, hay, stubble, though you do it with
your might, makes sorry life-building. We must
work the work of God while it is day. We must
build on the one foundation, gold, silver, pre
cious stones. What is it to do that? What is it
to build the right materials on the right founda
tion? It is to do the work given us to do, what
ever that may be, to whittle straws, to preach the
Gospel in the spirit of Christ. It is to live the
life of duty in the spirit of love. That is the
blessed life, the life which is of eternal worth,
which is its own reward — the life of which we
can never have enough, but of which we can
have as much as we choose. Would we not wish
this year, to build better than we have ever done
before. Yes! We all wish that. We must not
only wish ; we must choose and determine by the

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help of God to do it. Daily seek that help to
guide your hand, and strengthen your heart, to
give you wisdom and understanding. Daily look
to Him on whom you build as your foundation
and you will find. in your environment, all the
materials you need for a life-building that will
stand forever.

121

VII.
RECONSTRUCTION

"O House of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter?" saith
the Lord. "Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye
in mine hand, O House of Israel." — Jeremiah xviii: 6.

TT HE Potter and the Clay is a parable of the
making, the marring, the re-making of
human lives — the parable of happy as well as
humbling significance, a message of divine hope
for the world and for every man in it.

First, it is a parable of the making of man.
Pottery is one of our few surviving handicrafts.
This is the age of machinery, and though the
burden of human toil is much lightened and
production cheapened, one is sometimes tempted
to question whether this gain is not counter
balanced by the loss in other directions. The
workman becomes very much a part of the ma
chine. His work evokes nothing of the creator
or the artist in him. No thought of his own mind,
no deftness of his own hand, go into its produc
tion. But even the humblest craftsman, the pot
ter moulding an earthen pot out of the shapeless
clay, the blacksmith hammering out a horse's
shoe, works, not only with material, but with
thought and imagination. There is the working

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out of an idea. The hand-made product, unlike
the machine-made, has an individuality, some
thing of its maker's self stamped upon it.

Then, Brethren, none of God's works are
machine-made. There are no stereotyped pat
terns, no fixed moulds in creation. No two
worlds, no two leaves on a tree, are exactly the
same. God never repeats himself. Consider
how marvellous human individuality is, no
human face, no human soul has a duplicate. Of
all earth's millions there is not one who has not
characteristics that are his own, his own indi
vidual outlook on life, his own experience of
life into which no one else can fully enter. The
Creator does not make men by the gross. Each
of us embodies some distinct conception and
ideal of humanity existing in the Mind of God.
Brethren, that is a wonderful thought. There
is in each of us a self the world has never seen,
that we ourselves have never seen, that we only
sometimes seem to get a fleeting and distant
glimpse of — the man God meant when He made
us, our ideal self, our potential self, our true
self as God sees it, as it exists in His mind and
purpose. God, our Potter, puts the clay upon
His wheel, and moulds it with His hands. The
Potter's wheel — that is life. That is the mean
ing of all this strange and changeful life — its
laughter, its tears, its strains and its relaxations,

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its pleasant things that make the heart dance
with joy, its grim experiences that clutch the
heart with a grip of iron. It is the wheel on
which the Potter seeks to shape us to His mind,
sometimes with light delicate touch, bringing
out lines of grace and beauty, sometimes with
firm, severe pressure, removing excrescences,
or adding strength where it is needed. We shall
never understand life at all, until we understand
that it is the Potter's wheel. The Potter's wheel
and the Potter's hand are working together upon
us. Brethren, be sure of it. There is a certain
best possibility for each of us, that which we
ought to become, and may become, which God
will help us to become, if we will. The whole
plan of our life is laid out for that, a plan which,
could we read it, as we may one day read it, is
a never-ending study in the love and faithful
ness of God. See that mother bending over
the cradle! There her first born lies sleeping.
See the tender light that shines in her eyes, the
smile that comes and goes like a sunbeam on her
face! She is dreaming "what manner of child
shall this be?" She is building "castles in the
air." If only she might have her way, what
goodness, and greatness and happiness, should
be the portion of that young life! But, no
mother ever wished so much for her child as
God wishes and proposes for His children.

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What a thought that is for every one of us to
carry! Brethren, we are God's workmanship.
There is a pattern of each of us in the mind of
Him Who made us. There is a perfection for
each of us to reach — a crown of life for each
to win. We live in God's thought of us. We
fill a place in His everlasting purpose. That
is our birthright. There is for each of us this
original possibility — the greatest and best-
when we are first placed upon the Potter's wheel.
And the second great truth here is, that,
more or less, we fail to realize this initial pos
sibility. Some seem to fail entirely. All good
possibility in them seems to have run to evil.
But, more or less, we all fail. There is no
human life that can show its measure of accom
plished good. Few fulfill even human expecta
tions. Any one who has spent his youth at the
University, for example, must realize that.
That class of which he himself was one — the
brightest, cleverest young manhood of the
nation — had intellect enough, ambition enough,
opportunity enough to make the future of each
one of high accomplishment, to secure for each
the possibility of being a powerful influence for
good in the world. But, in after years, only a
few out of many such possibilities are fulfilled.
The moral force is lacking. Men give them
selves to the pursuit of inferior aims, or turn

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RECONSTRUCTION

aside into easy self-indulgent ways, and sink to
a lower plane in the scale of life. But who is
there that is not conscious of failure? Who can
assert that he has lived up even to his own imper
fect ideals? Who can flatter himself that his
life has been the best that was possible to him?
Brethren, I know not whether we shall ever be
permitted in the hereafter to read the transcript
of God's original thought of what our life might
have been, had we only yielded ourselves fully
to His hands that reached down from heaven
moulding men. But who, even now, does not
know enough to wish to be made again, as it
seems good to the Potter?

Let us think then of this re-making of life.
He made It again. The Potter could not make
what He would have wished, but He did His
best with the materials He had. So God is
always trying to do His best for us. If we have
refused the very best, still, there is a next best.
God puts us on the wheel again, and gives us
the chance of that. If innocence is lost, repent
ance is left. If yesterday is lost, to-day is left.
If one door is closed, another remains open.
If we have sold our birthright, our Father has
still a rich blessing in reserve. The Potter made
it again. Oh, words of hope! He turned a
failure into a success of a different kind. Cannot
I do with you, as this Potter, saith the Lord.

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In Florence there stands a colossal statue,
Michael Angelo's David, representing the shep
herd lad in the act of slinging the stone 'at the
Philistine giant. He stands erect, but the body
is slightly curved, in poise to hurl the fatal mis
sile. That statue had a remarkable history.
Long before, a sculptor had fetched a huge slab
of marble from Carrara, and had blocked it out.
But he had proved a sorry bungler, cutting a
great slice out of one side and spoiling the mar
ble. Neither he nor anyone else could see how a
statue could be made of it, and it lay useless for
a century, until Michael Angelo's eye saw
its possibilities and set to work upon it,
adapting the ruinous defect in it to the
poise of the curved figure. And thus he
wrought out his design, making the very mutila
tion of the marble serve his purpose. So
does God take the failure, the remains of a
human life, and fashion them anew. God takes
Saul of Tarsus as his piece of clay, puts him on
the wheel, and takes him to Jerusalem, where ;
he hears the preaching of Stephen. And who
can tell what kind of Christian, and Apostle <
Paul would have been, if he had not then
yielded, instead of kicking against the pricks?
But God puts this piece of obdurate clay a
second time upon the wheel, takes the persecutor,
and blasphemer, and murderer of the saints,

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and tries him again with the heavenly vision.
And what a vessel the Potter makes of him
at the second attempt! The blind zeal of the
Pharisee changed into the open-eyed zeal of
the Cross! The man himself, made the chosen
vessel to carry the mercy of God far and wide
among the natives !

I have said that there is always a "next best"
open to us. Is it always just a "next best?" I
do not know that we can say so. All that we
can say is, that it is something different. I do
not know that Paul with Stephen's blood upon
him, conscious always of being the chief of sin
ners, and a miraculous example of God's mercy,
was a "next best." I do not think we can judge
of that. The parable only says that, at the
second attempt, the Potter made a different ves
sel from that which he had intended to make.
Yet, like Michael Angelo's statue, that different
thing may be a very perfect and a very splen
did thing — a masterpiece of genius.

Now, how often we see the truth of this in
everyday life! Men miss tfieir first chances by
carelessness and self-indulgence, or by blunder
ing and mistaking their way. Others never take
that place in the world which they might have
taken, still there is a wonderful power of
recovery in the economy of Providence. The
bright, promising student has not become a brill-

129
9

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

iant light in the world but he is plodding,
hardworking pastor or doctor, who thinks some
times with a sigh of the untrodden heights ; yet
thanks God for what he is, rejoicing that the
greatest Master bore with his short-comings
and re-shaped him for other, yet honourable
and worthy ends.

But this word, "He made it again," goes
into the deepest things of life. This doctrine of
a second chance is one of the glories of the
Bible. It is the Gospel— the good news which
we all need— Christ's Gospel to all who have
failed, to all who have blundered, to all who
have sinned. De Quincey used to say that the
books which will be opened at the day of Judg
ment are simply the books of memory, with all
their grim record of our failures and transgres
sions. If that were the whole message of the
Bible, the Bible would be the Book of Despair.
But what the Gospel proclaims is that, indestruc
tible as the past is, irrevocable as are its con
sequences, yet every man made in God's image
is capable of another chance; and if, though
we have failed and fallen, we have not lost the
longing for higher things, then He is ready to
make the marred vessel over again. If we con
fess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteous
ness George Meredith has said that no man

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RECONSTRUCTION

can think, and not think hopefully; and certainly
that is true when we think of God, and all that
his love can accomplish. "Cannot I do with
you as this Potter?" What can we do, but go
to God and ask him for the new chance? Have
we lost battles? There is time to fight one
more, and win. Have we lost opportunities? It
is not too late to find new ones, and to use them
better. Perhaps the opportunity someone has
missed has been the greatest of all. You have
been called again and again to lay hold of spirit
ual life in Jesus Christ. You have sometimes
had a summons to live for greater things than
business or pleasure, but you heard as if you
heard it not, and closed your eyes against the
light. Awake thou that sleepest! To-day comes
to you another chance. To-day your salvation
stands again at the door and knocks. Christ will
make of you yet what will fill you with eternal
wonder and thankfulness, if only now you will
hear His voice and open to Him the door. My
Brethren, that is what God's forgiveness means.
It is not merely letting us off the consequences
of our sins — in fact, it is not that at all. It is
His making us again. His infinite power, His
infinite yearning to help us to repair our errors,
to conquer over sins, and become better and
stronger men by repentance, to make us what
we are still capable of becoming — vessels meet

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

for the Master's use. And it is this we need-
need all the time, on to the end — to put off the
old man, and put on the new man, God means
us to be — to turn, by God's grace, old failures
into new success, to forget the things which are
behind, and to reach out to those which are
before.

And this message of Divine hope should
come to us with special emphasis at the present
time. It is a time in which God has arisen for
the re-making of a world which has failed. It is
too vast a work for us fully to comprehend. But,
at anyrate, we feel, everyone must surely feel,
that the war is something God wants to use as
an effective means to show the nations that they
have failed. From all our religious leaders
there comes the call to national repentance. But
what are we to repent of? Wherein have we
failed? Well, Brethren, that is a question that
it would take volumes to answer. Yet the answer
may be given fundamentally in one word—
Christlessness, or, what is another name for the
same thing, selfishness, the selfishness of mili
tarism, the selfishness of a pleasure-seeking,
comfort-worshipping life, the selfishness of a
mammon worship, a far subtler and more perva
sive force than even militarism. Thank God!
It is losing its spell. But are not certain phases
at least, of mammon-worship losing their glam-

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RECONSTRUCTION

our too? Mere worldly success is not the hon
oured and attractive thing it was. Men who are
making their pile out of the nation's calamity are
not in good repute. Is not the mammon-god los
ing something of its tinsel glitter? Are we not
beginning to see that when men enter upon
business with a determination to succeed at any
cost, and at anyone's expense, when men are
determined to amass wealth whether they con
tribute to well-being or not, that is just war,
just the twin spirit of militarism? Are we not
beginning to see that if the world is to be made
again, reconstructed according to God's pur
pose, that too, as well as militarism, must go.

Brethren, we have passed through stern
days ; and stern days are yet in front of us. But
it is not for us merely to bow our necks to the
yoke that is laid upon us. Christ, is saying,
"Take My yoke upon you." There is the dawn
ing of a great spiritual opportunity in the
world's night. God is beckoning us to something
larger and nobler that lies beyond the dust of
battle and the thunder of the guns. And when
I say beckoning us, I mean you and me. I do
not know what national repentance is except the
repentance of the people that constitute the
nation. You cannot organize repentance. You
cannot organize a movement like that in advance
of the spirit of the people. Let us each seek to

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

embody the spirit of Christ in our own lives.
Let God make us again. So only shall human
ity be wrought over into the shape of God's
ideals, and let us be filled with the strength and
courage of a great hope, hope in God.

These things, shall be, a loftier race
Than e'er the world hath known shall rise,
With fire of freedom in their souls,
And light of knowledge in their eyes.

"Cannot I do with you even as this Potter?"
saith the Lord.

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IX.

THE LADDER FROM EARTH TO
HEAVEN

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set upon the earth, and
the top of it reached to Heaven: and behold the angels of God
ascending and descending on it. — Gen. xxviii: 12.

And He saith unto them : "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Here
after ye shall see Heaven open, and the angels of God ascending
and descending upon the Son of Man." — John I: 51.

"OURELY the Lord is in this place," said
^Jacob, "and I knew it not" It does not fol
low that God is not here, because we do not dis
cern his presence. We may see nothing in the
universe except earth and sky; but God is there.
We may see nothing in the Bible except chapter
and verse ; but God is there. We may see nothing
in the Church but eloquence, organization and
finance; yet God is there. We may see nothing
in our cross, save the agony and the sting; but
God is there. Our faith does not bring His pres
ence, neither do our blindness and unbelief anni
hilate it. But God is seeking us, and laying His
hand upon us, even when we are not seeking Him.

Thou hast been with me in the dark and cold,
And all the night I thought I was alone;
The chariots of thy glory round me rolled,
On me attending, yet by me unknown
The darkness of my night has been Thy day;

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

My stony pillow was thy ladder's rest;

And all Thine angels watched my couch of clay

To bless the soul, unconscious it was blest.

So it was with Jacob. Till his eyes
were opened, the rocky heights of Bethel
were to him a God-forsaken desert. He
thought himself a God-forsaken soul. He
had plotted and lied to obtain a great birthright,
and here he was a poor waif, a banished man, ly
ing down like a wild beast with nothing between
him and the earth, with nothing between him
and the sky, with nothing to speak to him but the
voice of his own remorse, and nothing to look
upon except the haunting faces of those he had
wronged. A more miserable, disillusioned,
abandoned-looking creature, seldom lay down to
sleep; but before he arose, he knew that God
knew where he was, and was his God. As in
sleep he grew tranquil and still, and as the troub
led, excited, flurried self he had brought with
him from Beersheba, fell away from him, the
Divine shone out softly and gloriously above and
around him. The dream grew. The Fabric of
the vision reared itself step by step. Wonder
after wonder was unfolded. Behold the ladder!
Behold the angels ! And then, behold the Lord !
and a voice came rolling down its steps — I am
Jehovah, the God of Abraham thy father; I will
be with thee in all places whither thou goest and

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LADDER FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN

will never leave thee. What floods of joy must
have been poured upon the outcast! That for
saken spot, that barren desolation has become the
Gate of Heaven. The wilderness resounded
with the grace of God, and overflowed with a
Divine peace. And his own life lay before him,
transfigured, filled with a Divine meaning, beck
oning him onward with the angel hands of
promise. And, Brethren, it is one of Christ's
most exquisite interpretations of the Old Testa
ment that He claims to be the fulfilment of the
vision of Bethel. In Him men will see the heav
ens of God's love, and the angels of God's sal
vation ascending and descending upon the Son of
Man. Jesus Christ is the true, the living ladder
"set up on the earth," and the top of it reaching
unto heaven.

I. "In the days of Jacob," says Hazlitt wist
fully, "there was a ladder between Heaven and
Earth ; but now, the heavens are gone farther off,
and have become astronomical." Let us rejoice
that the very reverse of this is true ; that through
Christ we have a more direct access to God and
heaven than if Jacob's ladder stood beside our
pillow. Heaven has not gone further off; it has
come a great deal nearer.

History suggests that America was known in
Europe before the days of Columbus. But it was
little more than a dream of the imagination, a

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

pretty myth for the poets, a fabled world some
where in the midst of the sea. But after Colum
bus had told his story, the new world suddenly
came a live and influential fact in the mind and
life of the world. The famous explorer convert
ed a dim speculation into one of the greatest fac
tors in the thought, the commerce, and politics,
—in the whole evolution and shaping of Europe.
So, before Christ's advent, elect souls in some
sense realized the spiritual sphere. They knew
God. They saw the land that is very far off.
But the vision was dim, and for the great mul
titude of men, it scarcely existed. But Christ has
brought immortality to light. He has made the
things that are unseen and eternal a master fact
for mankind. "Thou shalt see the Heavens
opened." "Yes," testifies St. Paul, "while we
look not at the things which are seen, but at the
things which are not seen; for the things which
are seen are temporal ; but the things which are
not seen are eternal." And Christ does this for
us, because He Himself is the ladder, the Living
Way, the Bridge, so to say, of spiritual commun
ication between Heaven and Earth. Come, this
Communion Sunday, and let us for a little, lie,
like Jacob, at the foot of the heavenly ladder,
and look upwards.

II. The ladder in Jacob's dream reached un
to Heaven ; yea, unto God. There was the Lord

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LADDER FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN

God Himself looking down with compassion and
forgiveness upon the remorseful, banished out
cast; and Christ reacheth unto heaven, unto God
Himself. Brethren, we know that. That is the
keystone of our Christian faith. Take that out
and it falls in ruins. We are sure of that as we
are sure that right is right, and wrong is wrong.
We are sure that the spiritual stature of Jesus
Christ reacheth unto heaven, unto very God. If
it were not so, our ladder were too short. If
Christ were only the most inspired of prophets
coming to us with a message about God, or the
most glorious of martyrs, witnessing His faith by
His blood, or the holiest of saints striving up
ward and onward, He might help to lift us
higher than we are; He could not lift us up all
the way to God, But, the ladder reacheth unto
heaven. "I have no difficulty about the Divinity
of Christ," said a well known theologian some
time ago, "He is the God I love and adore. What
I sometimes want to be assured of is, that a Deity
like Him is in charge of this world." We, too,
may sometimes feel a craving for assurance on
that point. But we, too, have no difficulty about
the Divinity of Christ. When He says, "He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father," our souls
welcome the assurance and rejoice in it. If you
ask us what the word Divine means, we say it
means Christ-like. If you ask us what is the

139

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

spirit of the Divine, we say the spirit of Christ.
If you ask us what the Divine life is, we say that
life Christ lived. We know the Divinity of
Christ, and that there is no other sort of Divinity
to be thought of. We know that if we can climb
this ladder, Christ, we shall get to God. "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God." The top of the
ladder is fixed safely in Heaven. "And the
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and
we beheld His glory." The foot of the ladder
rests firmly upon the Earth. Yes ! the ladder is
long enough. It stretches all the way; and as
you follow it upward, you see God looking upon
you and speaking unto you, saying to you, "I am
thy father's God— thy God."

III. For, if the top of the ladder reaches un
to Heaven, the foot of it reaches unto the Earth.
From Heaven to Earth ! That is far enough for
you and me. The ladder must come down into
the pit and mire of sin before we can begin to
climb. My Brethren, it is not astronomical dis
tance that separates from God, but spiritual dis
tance. There is nothing else that comes between
us and God, but that. Oh! It is not that God
is great, and I am small. That doth not separate.
It is not that He is infinite, and I am a mere pin
point as against a great continent. It is not that
He lives forever, and my days are as an hand-

140

LADDER FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN

breadth. It is not His omniscience, and my weak
ness that separate me from God. No! No more
than the feebleness and helplessness of your little
child separates it from your heart. No! These
things unite us to God, as your child's very weak
ness, his dependence on you endears him to you.
So God's greatness and my littleness, His wis
dom and my ignorance, His power and my weak
ness, these things are made for one another, and
my very need draws God to me as God's fulness
draws me to Him. But sin separates. Sin is the
fatal schism. It is spiritual distance, and it is a
distance we cannot measure. You cannot tell
how far it is from the pure and peaceful glad
ness of the Father's House to the rebellion and
sin of the far country. It is a distance we cannot
measure, do I say? I am wrong. There is one
thing that can measure it — only one — Love-
Love with its sacrifice and its forgiveness. One
thing only is longer, so to say, than the distance
between sin and holiness — the length to which
love can go in bearing wrong, and suffering for,
and forgiving wrong. You cannot forgive your
enemy, — no, nor your own child, except by a love
that will stretch as far as the estrangement and
farther. You cannot, and neither can God.
There is one measure only, for the spiritual dis
tance at which sin puts us from the holiness of
God. It is the same distance as from the Throne

141

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

of the Father to the abyss out of which Jesus
cried, "My God, My God, why hast Thou for
saken Me?" -the same distance from the Throne
of the Universe and the Grave in Joseph's gar
den. Brethren, the ladder is long enough. When
the forgiving father and the humble prodigal
meet in Christ, the tears and kisses of the one,
fall upon the bowed head of the other. Distance
is no more. The love of God has gone all the
way. It has made our sins His Cross, our re
demption His task. The heavenly ladder comes
down to us wherever we are. It reached great
and faithful Abraham in his day. It had to
descend many steps lower to the crooked and un
faithful Jacob. And as I lay me with Jacob at
its foot, I know that there is hope and healing for
me and for all the children of men.

IV. And by this ladder the angels of God
ascend and descend. Perhaps there are angels
that carry our prayers and thanksgiving up to the
Throne of Grace and that bring down from it
the help and blessing we need. Perhaps it is an
angel that sometimes whispers comfort to the
troubled heart and strengthens the fainting
spirit. Let us acknowledge that we know noth
ing about these couriers and ministers of mercy.
We take them here as a symbol. They are God's
messengers to you, and yours to Him. Your
prayers, your aspirations, your faith, your hope,

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LADDER FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN

your thanksgivings are your angels. First they
come down to you through the gate of Heaven,
and you send them back as your messenger to
Heaven. And then another relay comes back,
bringing all Divine blessing and help. Every
truth revealed to your soul, every strength in
time of need, consolation in every sorrow, sick
ness or duty, guidance in difficulty, guardian
ship in danger, are God's angels.

To-day, Brethren, God is in a special manner
giving us Jacob's vision of the ladder which
reaches unto heaven. Look up, and see God
looking down upon you in His unchangeable
love. Listen to the voice Divine that comes
down clear and distinct, into your soul: "I will
not leave thee until I have done that which I
have spoken to thee of." Brethren, these are the
very words of our Saviour to us in the Lord's
supper. That is the very meaning of this Sacra
ment. It means that in these symbols of His
body and Blood He pledges Himself to us anew.
He vows a faithfulness which all our fickleness,
a loyalty which all our inconstancy, a love which
all our coldness has not changed and cannot
change. He takes us up once more into the arms
of His everlasting purpose. "Lo, I am with you
always, and I will not leave thee until I have
done that which I have spoken to thee of."

What has He spoken unto you? Tell me
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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

what you speak unto Him and I will tell you
what He speaks unto you. Do you say, "Wash
me thoroughly from my iniquities and cleanse me
from my sins"? Then He says, "Though your
sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow."
Do you speak to Him of your soul's hunger and
thirst? Then he says, "Blessed are they that
hunger and thirst after righteousness for they
shall be filled." Or do you speak to Him of
your burden of sorrow? He says, "I w^l not
leave thee till your sorrow is turned into joy. Or,
is it the difficulties of your lot, the burden and
heat of your day, that you lay before Him? He
says to you, "They that wait upon the Lord shall
renew their strength. As thy days, so shall thy
strength be." Is it of straitness in the things of
this world, of daily bread, of health and strength,
and the vicissitudes of your calling that you
speak? He says, "The eyes of all wait upon Me,
and I give them their meat in due season." Is
it some cross of your soul, some evil habit that
clings, or some blessing for yourself or your chil
dren you make mention of? He says again, "I
will not leave thee till I have done it." To you
young people, girding on your armour, facing life
with its unforeseen tasks, temptations, and dan
gers, He says, "I will be with thee in all places
whither thou goest." To you who are old and
gray-headed, who have no long vista of years

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stretching before you, He says, "I will not for
sake thee." The outward man may decay but the
inward shall be renewed from day to day. With
good courage then may we say, athe Lord is my
helper, I will not fear. I will not fear my path,
for His goodness and mercy are my safeguards.
They follow me all the way, blotting out my
transgressions, correcting my failures and mis
takes. I will not fear the lurking snares of to
day, for he will keep my feet. I will not fear the
unknown experiences of to-morrow, for my times
are in His hand. I will not fear life, for his
grace is sufficient, nor death which He makes
the Crown of Life to the faithful."

Speak to Him that He may speak to thee.
so faint, as to escape His hearing. Yet, there is
one more thing to be said. God sets Christ, the
heavenly ladder, before us, that we may climb it.
Milton, in Paradise Lost, tells how sin and death
followed the track of Satan, and paved after
him a broad and beaten way over the abyss, a
bridge of wondrous length, stretching from
Earth to Hell. That is true. But this also is
true. Christ has ascended up on high and has
left behind Him a way stretching from earth to
heaven. It is the way He made for Himself
through the jungles of temptation, the deserts of
toil, and the dark valleys of humiliation. With
agony and bloody sweat He made His way, left

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it a made road, an explored and beaten track for
us to walk in — a ladder for us to climb. Not an
easy road even yet. Who is the man that shall
ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that hath
clean hands and a pure heart. And it is not an
easy thing to keep clean hands in this world,
much less easy to have a pure heart. But let us
be climbing; let every communion season find
us still climbing. As we take the pledges of our
Saviour's loyalty to-day let us give Him ours.
Let us begin anew to follow Him, and we shall
ascend — our whole life will be an ascending — •
until at last we reach the hill of God, and stand
within His holy place. Thus saith He, "I will
not leave thee until I have done that which I
have spoken to thee of." Amen.

146

X.

CHRIST'S ABSENCE FROM THE BODY

THE CONDITION OF HIS FULL

SPIRITUAL PRESENCE

Touch Me not: for I am not yet ascended to My Father.—
John xx : 17.

HESE are strange words on the lips of Jesus
Christ. Never before, never afterwards did
he use such words of repulsion or repression.
And strange, it was against Mary, most devoted
of His followers, last at the Cross, first at the
Tomb, that the barrier was erected.

Mary stood without at the Sepulchre weep
ing, and as she wept Jesus saith unto her,
"Mary," one word only, but it was enough. It
was the old voice with its familiar cadence.
Mary had heard it too often to mistake it for an
other. Yet when Mary, lost in a tumult of de
light was rushing forward to fling herself upon
Him He arrests her in her transport — "Touch
Me not." She was assuming that He had come
back to the old scenes in the old manner, to re
sume the old mode of life with his followers, but
our Lord announces that this had come to an end.
This intercourse with His disciples through the
senses, the audible word, the tone of voice, the

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

grasp of hand, and the expression of counten
ance, and all the visible, tangible symbols by
which souls clothed in flesh and blood are drawn
to one another was past and gone.

John, who had leaned on the Master's bosom,
must learn now another and nobler way of rest
ing on Him. Peter must learn another way of
grasping his Master's upholding hand, than had
saved him when sinking in the Galilean Lake.
Mary had thought that the supreme object of
her trust and devotion could be touched with a
finger, clung to by clasping hands. She must
learn to feel Him nearer and to cling to Him,
not with the senses but with the soul.

Quite obviously, it seems to me, "Touch Me
not, for I am not yet ascended," imply, "And
when I am ascended you may touch. True con
tact with me is not that of flesh with flesh, which
is past and gone with my dying; but it is that of
spirit with spirit, and that cannot be fully
realized until I ascend to the Father. Then you
shall touch Me and cling to Me. You shall
open your very mind, heart and soul to Me as
never before, and I shall come back and make my
abode there."

The truth then is that Christ's bodily absence
is the condition of His full spiritual presence.
There are facts of very familiar experience
which, so far as they go, are in line with that

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CHRIST'S ABSENCE FROM THE BODY

truth. Do we not often find as a matter of com
mon experience that bodily separation often
brings us spiritually nearer, causes what is most
high-souled in our relations to each other, to
become stronger and clearer than ever before?
To what man is his native land, "the hills of
home," so dear as to the exile? When is it
the youth first values his home? Is it not when
he first leaves it? And is it not the absent ones
who come to occupy, for the first time perhaps,
their true place in the thought and heart of the
home? We have found that we never knew till
that last evening, or that first letter, how close
heart was to heart. While all are thought of,
and loved, and prayed for, is it not the absent
ones — the boys overseas, the dear ones far away,
who obtain the first place? And we reach a still
closer analogy in the experience of the great
parting; for again, is it not most true that this
only brings nearer in spirit those in whose hearts
the truth of love has ever dwelt? Ah! We enter
tain our angels so often unawares. We live by
their side day after day, year after year; but it
needs that they take their flight to heaven before
we see the gleam of celestial light on their wings.
Then their excellences, their worth, their good
ness shine out upon us, and stamp their image
with a diviner impression upon the heart. How
often is it so! Alas! Alas! When it is not so.

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

It is in the solemn hour of parting, that the most
perfect union of soul with soul is realized, the
everlasting meeting begins. And all these things
were true in reference to our Lord. What
Mary felt, and what we all sometimes feel, is
expressed in the children's hymn,

I think when I read that sweet story of old

When Jesus was here among men,

How He called little children as lambs to His fold,

I should like to have been with Him then;

I wish that His hands had been placed on m head,

That His arms had been thrown around me,

And that I might have seen His kind look when He said,

Let the little ones come unto Me.

That is a very human feeling, but it does not
exhaust the matter.

Jesus lived for thirty years among the towns
men of Nazareth, and not a glimmering of His
greatness entered their minds. "Is not this the
carpenter?" they said. It might be so still.
Jesus Christ might be walking the streets of
Toronto ; He might be your next door neighbor,
and you would never know it. It is only the
risen and ascended Christ whom we can see in,
some small measure — see as He is, whom our
souls can truly touch.

All that is true; yet all merely human
analogies fail to furnish an adequate parallel
to the Communion between the ascended Christ
and us who are here on earth. You recall His

ISO

CHRIST'S ABSENCE FROM THE BODY

own words: "It is expedient for you that I go
away, for if I go not away the Comforter will
not come unto you, but if I depart I will send
Him unto you." In other words, Christ
ascended — went away, only to come again in a
greater way, no longer as a bodily presence,
limited and local, but as a universal, spiritual
presence and power. It was not possible that
He should be both at the same time; and He
went away in the bodily form, that He might
come and abide with us in the spiritual way.
And I want you to consider how it is that this
makes Christ the Saviour we need.

Consider, then, that Christ's bodily presence
was subject to the ordinary limitations of space.
He could not, any more than you or I, be in
more than one place at one time. One suppli
ant only, or a group of suppliants, could touch
Him on any one occasion.

One day when Christ was at Perea a message
came to Him that his friend Lazarus was sick.
Now, Jesus loved Mary and Martha and their
brother Lazarus. But He was several days'
journey from Bethany, and perhaps there were
sick bodies to be healed and sick souls to be
saved where He was. At any rate, He was so
situated that He could not immediately fly to
the help of His afflicted friends in Bethany.
But now that He is ascended there is no sum-

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

mons of need He cannot answer, how and when
He wills. Now, we can touch Him whenever
two or three are gathered together in His House.
He is in the midst. Now, He can be with each
of His friends at any, and at all times. With
every John in his Patmos, with every Peter in
his cell, with every penitent, crying, "God be
merciful to me a sinner," with every soul in dis
tress, every moan of weeping, every tempted
one, every fallen one, every follower bearing His
Cross, every soldier fighting His battle, every
servant doing His work — there Christ is, watch
ing, guarding, pardoning, healing, teaching,
guiding, comforting, strengthening. Consider,
I say, this wondrous thing, that Christ went
away from our bodily touch, that our souls
might always touch Him. He went away to
Heaven, only that on earth He might be with us
always. He is there; He is here — there prepar
ing a place for us; here preparing us for the
place. There in the noon-day; here in the twi
light. There amid the palms of victory; here
amid the heart of the battle. He ascended up on
high that He might fulfill all things.

And it is not only, so to say, the extent of
Christ's presence that is freed from all bodily
limitations; it is rendered altogether more vital
and intimate. We may sometimes envy the
privilege of a Mary sitting at His feet looking

152

CHRIST'S ABSENCE FROM THE BODY

up into His face, John leaning on His breast,
or the woman of Samaria listening to His dis
course, and, no doubt, that manner of touching
Him had its own peculiar preciousness. To
lose it, was to lose much ; but it was to lose much,
only to gain more. Brethren, there is a far
richer privilege granted to us — did we but know
it — to have Christ dwelling in our hearts by
faith. To them in the days of the flesh, it was
not an indwelling, but an outdwelling Christ.
He was the dear, revered teacher. Neverthe
less, His voice was still an external voice, speak
ing to them from without, not from within their
own minds. And, had He continued to live
in the flesh, His kingdom in this world must
have taken the form of a kind of glorified
Papacy. Wherever controversy arose upon any
point of doctrine or duty, when any perplexity
or social problem pressed for solution, instead
of earnestly endeavouring to think it out, we
should hurry off with it to the Master, to have
it settled for us by His authoritative pronounce
ment. But Christ will not be a Pope. He will
not let us touch Him in that way. He does a
far greater thing. To all those who love the
truth, He gives the Spirit of Truth, to quicken
them, not, observe, to give them all truth, but to
guide them into all truth. That is true educa
tion ; not to give the pupil the true answer to all

153

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

his problems, but to guide his thinking and
enable him to find it for himself. And, Breth
ren, whatever perplexities you may have
about religious truth, or about your own duty,
or about the way in which God is leading you,
if you really want the truth, want to know it
that you may do it, rely upon the unseen Christ,
the Spirit of Truth within you. He will guide
you unto the fruitful and practical possession,
as a lamp for the feet and a light for the path,
of all you need to know for doing God's will on
earth.

Then, lastly, the departure of Christ in bodily
presence meant the substitution of an inward
life-giving spirit, an indwelling purity, for the
mere influence of an outward example. God
forbid that I should ever appear to place a
secondary value upon the example which our
Blessed Lord has left us that we should follow
in his steps! Never was there created in the
imagination of man, never but once witnessed
on earth so heavenly a vision, Christ's example
is the world's one standard of perfect goodness.
The only perfect morality is to love and follow
Him. Yet if we had it always before our eyes,
would that help us truly to follow it? Would
it not tend rather to slavish external imitations?
Christ will not have us touch Him in that way,
but in a more real way. He would not have us

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CHRIST'S ABSENCE FROM THE BODY

be as the mere copyist, mechanically reproduc
ing the work of another, but rather as the artist
inspired and guided, it is true, by another's work,
but going on to fashion his own forms of beauty,
and to express his own conceptions.

After all, Brethren, it is more than an
example that we need. Spiritually, man is a
poor cripple; and to hold up to him example
and nothing more, is as if one were to step very
nimbly and gracefully before a cripple and say,
Take a lesson from me in the art of walking.
Brethren, Christ's example is our one royal law.
But what power shall take that Law and make
it Life, write it on our hearts, inspire it into our
affections, conform our dispositions and require
ments, so that knowledge will pass into love, and
duty into choice? There is one power only that
can do this for us and all men — the Spirit of
Christ — the Spirit which made Christ Himself
what He was, Who dwelt in Him, and made it
His gladness and delight — His meat and drink,
to do His Father's will. And this divinest gift,
which is our supreme need, He gives to all who
touch Him soul to soul. And of all this, He
gives us assurance in the sacrament of the
Supper. That Sacrament is a sign and pledge
to us of His presence with His Church and in
it — with every believing soul. Though it is
a different kind of presence from what it

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

was, it is not less but more real, not less but
more near and immediate. There is no near and
far in the spiritual world. Nearness here means
likeness. Kindred spirits are always near,, how
ever separated by space or time; and spirits that
have nothing in common are wide as the poles
asunder, though they dwell under the same
roof. We come close to Christ when we are
lifted up in heart and mind to Him. And if
we have the Mind of Christ, we are with Him—
nay, He is in us and we in Him. And now He
does not say, Touch Me not. He says, I am
ascended so that I am with you, therefore touch
Me. May He Himself help us to touch Him
and cling to Him with our whole heart and soul,
with all our need of purity, and peace, and truth,
and courage, that so touching Him, we may gain
that power by which alone we are able to do and
to endure.

156

XL

MORAL WEAKNESS CONFRONTED

WITH THE FORCE OF

CIRCUMSTANCES

When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing but that rather
a tumult was made, he took water and washed his hands before
the multitude, saying, "I am innocent of the blood of this just
person; see ye to it."— Matthew xxxii: 24.

IT OW long has Pilate stood there washing
* * his hands, which are yet never clean? Will
he never come down from that pillory, and see
that stain removed? No ; never while the world
standeth. Yet Pilate was not, all things con
sidered, an exceptionally bad man. "When his
position is understood," says an excellent Life
of Christ, "it appears that he was, to a large
extent, the victim of circumstances." The vic
tim of circumstances — that is the keynote of what
I want to say this evening. Was Pilate com
pelled to be — there is no doubt he was — but
was he compelled to be, and is anybody fore
doomed and compelled to be the victim of cir
cumstances?

And first, we must look at the circumstances.
Pontius Pilate was the 'Roman Governor of
Judea. The work of governing that most turbu-

157

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

lent and intractable province was as difficult a
business as, say, the governing of Ireland to-day.
And Pilate was ill-adapted to it. He wanted
to play the part of the strong man, the man of
imperious temper who carries things with a
high hand. But his Jewish subjects soon dis
covered that he was not equal to his part. His
predecessors in office had been prudent enough
to respect the religious scruples of the Jews,
and when their troops marched through the
streets of Jerusalem, announced that they should
not carry their standards emblazoned with the
image of the Emperor. But Pilate, disdaining
this concession, bade his cohorts march in with
all their insignia, and plant them on the Citadel.
The indignant Jews thronged to the Palace, and
clamoured for the removal of the offensive
images. For five days they continued their
importunity, until Pilate surrounded them with
troops and threatened them with instant death
unless they desisted. To his amazement and
discomfiture, they flung themselves on their
faces and, baring their necks, declared them
selves ready to die rather than endure the viola
tion of their laws. Pilate gave way, and hii
compliance was fatal to his authority ever after
wards. The Jews had taken his measure, so
Pilate went on in his unfortunate regime, alter
nately exasperating the Jews and yielding to

158

MORAL WEAKNESS CONFRONTED

them. And then, on the other hand, there was
Pilate's master, the old Emperor Tiberius, a
morose, jealous tyrant, one who seemed to take
a delight in humiliating his lieutenants, who
greedily drank in any complaint against them,
and from whom Pilate knew an unsuccessful
governor would receive short shrift. And Pilate
had been already complained of and repri
manded. Between the Jews on the one hand,
and the Emperor on the other, he was between
the upper and the nether mill-stone. All this
is to be remembered. It gives us the key to the
tragedy which enacted itself in Pilate's soul on
that fateful day when Jesus Christ was brought
as a prisoner before him. For what is most
conspicuous in all his proceedings is his strange,
almost passionate desire to escape responsibility
—to stand outside this matter of Jesus Christ
and his trial altogether. And we see how the
net is drawn closer and closer around him, till
no loophole of escape is left, and he is compelled
at last to take action, and even then disclaiming
responsibility for the action he takes, washing
his hands of it, and protesting that he is the vic
tim of circumstances.

So Pilate sees at the first glance what his
duty is. "I find in Him no fault at all." Here
there should have been an end of the matter.
The judge had pronounced his verdict "not

159

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

guilty." What remained — but to release the
prisoner and grant Him the protection of the
court against all lawless attack? But no. As
Pilate looks down on that sea of stony faces his
resolution fails. He acquits the prisoner, then
parleys with the accusers, remonstrates, dis
suades, tries in every way to wriggle out of
responsibility. Learning that Jesus is a Galilean,
therefore a subject of Herod, he conceives the
happy thought of sending the prisoner to him
for judgment. But Herod, more buffoon than
King, thinks it excellent policy to return the so-
called King of the Jews upon Pilate's hands,
clothed in a caricature of regal attire, a crown
of thorns upon His head. Then the mob comes
shouting up to the palace gate demanding their
annual gift of a released prisoner. To-day their
demand is music in Pilate's ears. He offers
them Jesus. But once again his weak expedient
breaks in his hands. "Not this man but Barab-
bas," they cry. Then, like other weak men in
a strait, Pilate proposes a middle course. He
will have Jesus scourged to satisfy their malice;
then release Him to satisfy his own conscience.
But in vain. With all his resourcefulness and
ingenuity, and with all his good wishes and
intentions too, the chain of circumstances was
closing around Pontius Pilate. The last rivet
was fastened, when now the Jews brought out

160

MORAL WEAKNESS CONFRONTED

the weapon they had been keeping in reserve,
the one Pilate had been in mortal terror of all
the time. They hold the terror of Tiberius
over him. "If thou let this man go, thou art
not Caesar's friend." To do his duty, Pilate
had been willing to risk something — but not
this. "If thou let this man go, thou are not
Caesar's friend." That was enough. Pilate
succumbed; yet not without one more weak,
unavailing protest. Calling for a basin of water
he solemnly washed his hands of the blood of
this just person.

Now the story of Pilate's shipwreck touches
us very closely. It is the common, everyday
tragedy of human life — the tragedy of moral
weakness in its unsuccessful struggle with the
force of circumstances. It excites in us contend
ing feelings as we read it. One moment we find
no blame too severe ; and then, as one's point of
view changes, we feel nothing but pity. Another
moment, when compassion for the unfortunate
victim of circumstances holds the field, we are
again thrown back upon the fact that he, and he
alone, was to blame, that nothing absolves him
from responsibility for what he did. It shows
us how complex a thing human life is, how
impossible it is for us to adjust the balance of
judgment between the opposing weight of cir
cumstances on the one hand, and of responsi-

161

11

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

bility on the other. It says to us, "Judge not
that ye be not judged." It awakens a prayer,
"Lead us not into temptation." Still, let us try
to learn some plain lessons from it.

It is the common, everyday tragedy of human
life because we see in it a man handicapped
by his own past. All the circumstances which
made it so terribly hard for Pilate to save his
soul that day, were of his own making. Had
it not been for the fear of having all the inci
dents of his past misgovernment raked up, Pilate
would quickly have marched his troops across
the square, and cleared it of the mob and defied
the Sanhedrin. But Pilate had given hostages
to the enemy. His hands were tied. And, in
the same way, many a man is in the position of
paying moral blackmail for something in his
past. I am not thinking of anything specially
criminal. I mean that often men form habits
and associations which present a very formidable
hindrance when they would fain begin to live
a better life. There are many people who know
absolutely, that they ought to be Christians, that
Christ's side is the right side in the battle of life,
and that they ought to be His servants, soldiers
and followers. They cannot help knowing it
and admitting it. But they have not begun to
live this better life because of certain self-made
difficulties standing in the way. How are they

162

MORAL WEAKNESS CONFRONTED

to face the sacrifices of these questionable indul
gences? How are they to abandon those plea
sant, but not very pure, or inspiring associations
which have grown to be part of their lives?
There are many people who, if they could begin
again, would take a different path, or at least
they think so. They would choose the better
part, and walk in the high and noble way. But
they have committed themselves to the other side.
They have given all who know them to under
stand that they are not religious men. They have
talked about sacred things carelessly, perhaps
contemptuously. They have made a reputation
of that sort. They have beset themselves with a
score of entanglements; and all their past now
stands in their way. The way of transgressors is
hard — so it is said. But it is not hard in itself.
It is easy; for it follows the line of least resist
ance. It is only when one wants to retrace it,
that it becomes hard. And then, it is hard
indeed. It was so for Pilate. When we read
the story of that prolonged duel between his
better self and his temptations, we see him like
a mountain climber who has lost his footing in
some deadly slope, wildly clutching at what
ever projecting stone, or shrub, or tuft of grass,
might arrest his downward course; but the slope
is too steep, the mountain is too great, and he
is dragged on as if by some irresistible hand to

163

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

the edge of the abyss. And yet, that comparison
is essentially defective. There is no moral drift
which may not be arrested. No man is bound
by his past. Even Pilate could have saved him
self. We can picture Pilate as a conqueror.
That is what makes the terrible, tragic interest
of his story. Were we reading it for the first
time we should follow it step by step with
intense eagerness, always hoping that at the last
he will show himself a true man, and break
through all entanglements. It was for Pilate
to determine whether he would be chained to
his past or pay the price of freedom. There is
always a price to pay. By paying that price you
can be free.

But here is the second thing about Pilate.
He was foredoomed to failure from the first,
only because there was in the background of
his mind the knowledge that there was a certain
price — a price he had determined not to pay.
He knew what was his duty, and earnestly
desired to do it. If he might obey his conscience,
hazarding Caesar's displeasure, he would
rejoice. If he could evade the issue and shuffle
off upon others the unwelcome responsibility
that was thrust upon him, he would be content.
But if there were no way of escape, if that choice
was forced upon him, Pilate secretly knew on
which side his decision would fall. His whole

164

MORAL WEAKNESS CONFRONTED

attitude throughout that day is that of a man
saying, "I am very sorry; I hate to do this; but
you see, I cannot help myself." Brethren,
nothing is more common than this. It is the
plea for nine-tenths of the wrong-doing in the
world — that men are driven to it. So the Kaiser
tells the world, and possibly his own conscience
—that he was driven to make the war — driven
to violate the neutrality of Belgium, driven to
the countless atrocities that blacken his name.
So other men tell us that they are driven to drink,
driven to dishonesty, driven to crime. Strange
— is it not? that people should be so easily driven
in these directions, and so unsusceptible to driv
ing in others ! It is easy to drive some men to the
tavern, whom it would take a mighty power to
drive to the church. And those who are driven
to dishonest ways of making a livelihood — how
hard it would be to drive them to honest labour!
Men are not so easily driven. They go very
slowly indeed in any direction which they
heartily dislike. But Pilate stands on a differ
ent level. His case does seriously raise the
question — Can man ever be the helpless victim
of circumstances? Brethren, it is a serious ques
tion. It is easy to say no ; but it is not a question
to be lightly answered. It was a great thing, a
tremendous thing, that was demanded of Pilate
— to risk the displeasure of that jealous, vindic-

165

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

tive tyrant at Rome. The loss of place, of power,
emolument, perhaps, liberty or even life, and
all for the sake of a Jew, an obscure, friendless
Jew. Was this possible? Pilate said, "No.
Necessity is laid upon me. I must safeguard
myself." But was is possible? What answer
is given by Him who stands before Pilate's
judgment seat? What said He? He, too, said,
"Necessity is laid upon me." He, too, said, "I
must do the will of Him that sent Me. I must
drink the cup He giveth." Pilate's must and
Christ's must. Brethren, that is the ultimate
choice. Which is the true one? The whole
width of the moral universe lies between them.
The one is the soul's prisonhouse. All those
pseudo-necessities, all those false musts — must
live, must do, as others do, must defer to public
opinion, are the soul's fetters. But Christ's
must/ That is the key which unlocks every
prison door, breaks every shackle of the soul.
Circumstances have no force at all against that
must of Jesus Christ. Let a man, in whatever
circumstances he find himself, only try Christ's
kev — the one simple necessity of doing the will
of God, and the prison doors fly open. It may
be to take but one step, to speak but a single
word, and in a moment the tyranny of circum
stances is broken, the encircling chain is snapped,
the spellbound soul is free.

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MORAL WEAKNESS CONFRONTED

But there was another element that contrib
uted to Pilate's downfall — the idea he clung
to of escaping personal responsibility — that he
could do in reality what he did in pantomine—
wash his own hands of it, and say to the insti
gators of his guilt, "See ye to it." Again, a
common and most mischievous idea. Associa
tion has a wonderful power to lull the conscience
to sleep. In business a firm will frequently do
what its individual partners would scorn to do :
syndicates and companies, what many of their
shareholders would not stoop to do in their pri
vate capacity: political parties which no hon
ourable man in that party would do. Corpora
tions and communities permit wrongs which no
right-minded citizen approves. This is one of
the great evils of our time in our land, and all
over the world. My Brethren, God does not
recognize the principle of limited liability. It
does not hold in the moral world. Ah! Do not
say that it is the other partner in the firm who
does the shady things. Do not charge your delin
quencies upon your neighbour or your fellow-
tradesmen, or the customs of society, or the ten
dency of the times. God will send the bill to
you. You cannot wash your hands. No man
will be your scapegoat at the last. You may
join in the crowd; but the crowd will have
vanished, and you will find yourself all alone
at the Judgment Seat.

167

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

Responsibility, responsibility — that is the
great word which Pilate's pathetic story leaves
upon our minds. And it is a word that has eyes
that look in every direction. Pilate would wash
his hands of the crucifixion of Christ. He would
ascribe it to the tigerish ferocity of these Jews.
But it is in other ways that we are most apt to
wash our hands of responsibility.

Pythagoras was once asked what his busi
ness was in the world. He replied, that at the
Olympic games some people came to try for the
prizes, some to dispose of their merchandise,
some to meet their friends and enjoy themselves,
and some only to look on. And said Pythagoras,
"I am one of those who come to look on at life."
That may be the philosopher's business. It is
not the Christian's. We are here not to look
on at life, but to take our place in it. We can
not wash our hands of things as we would often
like to do. We cannot hide our face from our
country in the time of its need. We cannot dis
regard the call to Christian service in the
Church and in the State. We cannot resign, and
withdraw from service, if things do not go as
we want. We really cannot do that without
leaving the spirit of Christ behind us. For
Christ never washes His hands of men. It is
wonderful. He never washes His hands of
responsibility for you and me. He is no looker-

168

MORAL WEAKNESS CONFRONTED

on at the tragedies and comedies of our existence.
He does not hold aloof. He has made Himself
responsible for us. He identifies Himself with
us. He bears our sins. He enters into the heart
of all our struggles. Let not the mind of Pon
tius Pilate, but the mind which was in Christ
Jesus, be also in us.

169

XII.

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

O OME time ago, in the days before the war,
|r a German theologian prophesied that the
hope of immortality would count for less and
less in our religion, and would ultimately dis
appear. And it must be admitted that this fore
cast seemed to be in accord with the general
trend of thought and interest. It is true that
no ground of reason on which men have been
wont to base this hope has been rendered unten
able, and that no new fact has been discovered
that discredits it; the contrary, as will presently
be shown, is the case. It is true also, that the
results of the most recent scholarly study of the
Scriptures point entirely in the opposite direc
tion. Especially is it the case that a more search
ing and realistic investigation of the Gospels
than they had been before subjected to, shows
that the eschatological element in the Life and
Teaching of Jesus is not anything secondary,
but is fundamental and pervasive to an extent
which had not been apprehended. So much
so, that a veteran and prince among New Testa
ment scholars, Dr. Sanday, is found acknow-

Issued by the Assembly's Commission on the War.

171

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

ledging that he had not "until lately adequately
realized how far the centre of gravity of our
Lord's ministry and mission lay beyond the
grave." Whether the results of this closer his
torical interpretation will in course of time filter
down into popular thought, and if they do, in
what form and with what effect, remains a ques
tion. Meantime it is beyond question that for
at least a generation the hope of immortality has
been counting for less and less in our religious
life. The majority of people, no doubt, retain
the traditional belief in a future state of exist
ence; but it does not grip, it scarcely interests
them ; at most it ministers a vague consolation in
time of bereavement. And the same thing has
come to be true of those for whom religion is
more vital, and of the Church as a whole. Be
fore the outbreak of the war, sermons whose key
note was the life everlasting were comparatively
seldom heard from our pulpits, and there was
no more neglected section of the hymn book
than that on the Last Things.

Nor is it difficult to account for this. A
prolonged period of peace and prosperity, when
progress in every department of activity seems
to be constant and almost automatic, and the near
horizon is bright with dazzling possibilities, is
not one in which the vision of eternity is apt
to grow most vivid. "Soul, thou hast much

172

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

goods laid up for many years" tends to become
the utterance, not of a besotted individual, but
of the collective mind. Another and more cre
ditable cause is the new emphasis which in this
generation is laid upon the social aspects and
applications of Christianity. Human progress
never succeeds in keeping to the via media;
its advance is always by zigzags. We seem inca
pable of doing justice to one interest without
doing injustice to another. So it is now. There
was a time when the conception of the Christ
ian salvation was far too exclusively that of
dying in the peace of believing and going to
Heaven. But we have changed all that. Social
reform rather than the "salvation of souls" is
our watchword; and the most earnest religion
we have is more intent on getting things put
right here and now than on any future Kingdom
of Heaven. And how much, how very much,
there is that is wholesome, how much to be
thankful for, in this reaction from an excessive
individualism and other-worldliness!

Yet, if we will listen to the teaching of his
tory we shall be aware of the peril that attends
all such reactions. We shall learn that in the
Body of Truth no member can suffer neglect
without injury to the rest; and shall take warn
ing that we can never remedy one defect by
creating another. And the question this paper

173

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

is intended in the first place to raise is, whether
apart from the conviction of personal immor
tality — if we believe that this present state of
existence contains all there is, not only for our
selves but for all men — it is possible to possess
any ideal for the individual life, or any hope
for human society, that can be called stimulat
ing and satisfying.

We ungrudgingly admit — or, rather, gladly
assert — that there are men who with no hope
beyond the grave live noble, self-denying lives,
who show an enthusiastic interest in all that
concerns the welfare of their fellow-men, who
are willing to spend and be spent, to labor and
suffer, and even die, (as many have done in the
present war) merely that those who come after
them may find the world a better place. Nor is
it to be thought that any of us must live ignobly,
although we believed that life would end next
week. Right is always right, and wrong unal
terably wrong; and in that faith, even if all
things human end in death, we should have to
live as best we might. But that "best" would
not be well. For we are saved by hope. We
are so made that we cannot act in the present and
for the present only. To say that we are rational
beings means that we act with an outlook upon
some future near or far. We sow in hope that
we shall reap, or that others will reap. The per-

174

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

manence of any fact, either in itself or in its
consequences, is as essential factor of value;
and while moral ideals have an absolute value —
the value of right depending on nothing else
than its Tightness — yet an ideal to be a fact at
all, must have being. And the ideal has being
only in minds ; and if all the minds whose ideal
it is cease to exist, not only its existence but
every trace and memory of its existence must
be obliterated. We may say that to do right is
at any rate eternally right; that, whatever hap
pens, it will always be a fact that we made the
right choice, and that this fact will enter some
how as a component into the general sum of
human things ; but if that general sum is finally
nothing, what value remains to its components?
We may say that the past is never dead but lives
still in the present and will live on in the future;
bu*: if a time shall come when for humanity
there is no present and no future, but only a
past that is absolutely gone, which there is
nothing to recall and no one to remember, can
it be said that anything done in it is a fact of
imperishable value? It must be admitted at
any rate that it makes practically a vast differ
ence whether one is convinced that the right
choice he makes, it may be in the face of sore
temptation, is destined to bear permanent fruit
in his own and in other lives, or that all fidelity,

175

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

all striving after purity and goodness, will in the
end leave no trace anywhere. The truth is that
we are saved by hope; that all men who live
nobly and fight the good fight do so because
they believe that their action will bear fruit in
some future far or near. They have thought out
matters so far, and it is only so long as we do not
think them out to the end that we can ignore
the hope of personal immortality.

For what is the substitute which a popular
school of modern thought offers for this? It is
the contribution each of us can make to the
future progress of the race, that we may live
on in other lives made better by the fact that we
have lived. If we must feed our minds on a
future, it is far better to set our hearts on doing
what we can in our brief day to make life better
for those who are to come after us, than to
hanker after the continuance of our own petty
personal existence. We ought to remember,
as it is often said, that though God buries the
Workman, He carries on the work, and that it
is the work, not the tools, that is the important
thing. But this is merely to evade the ultimate
issue. One would like to know how God is
going to carry on the work when He has buried
all the workmen; and, moreover, what the
"work" is He is going to carry on (believing
with St. Paul that "we are His workmanship").

176

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

Those who rest in this position assume the
immortality of man, though not of men. They
contemplate the permanence of the human
race. But how, one would again like to know,
without individual immortality can there be an
immortality of the race? Modern science dis
pels any such dream. "Till a period within
the memory of men now living it was possible
to credit terrestrial life with an infinite future,
wherein there was room for an infinite approach
to an unpictured perfection. It could always
be hoped that human efforts would leave behind
them some enduring traces which, however
slowly, might accumulate without end. But
hopes like these are possible no more. All ter
restrial life is in revolt against the second law
of thermodynamics (the degradation of
energy) ; but, to it, in the end, must all terrestrial
life succumb." (A. J. Balfour, Theism and
Humanism, pp. 90-92.) If the physical history
of this planet is allowed to run out its natural
course, there will one day be a last man; and
if there is no life beyond, with his expiring
breath humanity will be extinct, all its history
of mingled good and evil, its sins and heroisms,
its aspirations and struggles, have gone down
into the grave of everlasting nonentity. It seems
a fine thing to say: What matters if I pass?
let me think of others. But these other lives

177
12

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

have become petty and insignificant as your
own. Try as you will to obtain firm footing,
all is sinking sand. Human griefs and human
happiness, human right and human wrong, all
are ephemeral as the itching of your eyebrow.
There is no escape from the ultimate issue. If
the life of the individual is only "a momentary
taste of being, from the well amid the waste/'
then all human history is but the "phantom
caravan" which at last reaches "the nothing it
set out from." In Plato's phrase, all things
are spent on death. Could any creed be more
paralyzing, if its implications were realized?
It is because they do not think matters out to
the end that those who deny the hope of immor
tality, can endure the denial.*

But the tragic events of the times in which
we live are compelling us so to think, and to-day
the Hope of the Gospel is nearer and dearer to
multitudes than ever before. Not that the war
with its colossal sacrifice of human personality
in any way strengthens the case for immortality;
but it brings the alternative home to us with a
poignant intensity. When men, obeying the call
of duty, are cut down in thick swaths long

*There are exceptions to this statement, but they are of such a
kind as only to emphasize its general truth. One who has hon
estly faced the final issue writes: "Only on the firm foundation
of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation hereafter be
built" (Hon. Bertrand Russell, PhU&svpkical Essays, p. 60.)

178

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

ere the scythe of time had any claim upon them,
their powers still in the green blade, their
dreams and ambitions unrealized, their work
apparently undone, if this were the end, then
what is man? His beauty is consumed like the
moth; his days are like unto vanity. We feel
the tragic incompleteness of these young lives;
and then we feel the incompleteness of all human
life, feel that it cannot be a circle closing us in,
it must be a path leading elsewhere. It is so
manifestly a fragment, a beginning, a sowing-
time of which the full harvest must be hereafter.

To reach an assurance so greatly to be desired
men have followed various paths. There is the
path of spiritualism, of actual communications
from the departed, demonstrating to the senses
the fact of their survival beyond death. But
without affirming or denying or committing
oneself to any opinion about the reality of such
manifestations, one may express the conviction
that, while they may in certain cases confirm
belief in personal immortality, they can never
originate it. It is safe to assert that no one has
ever come really to believe in a future life
because he has seen a ghost or heard mysterious
table-rappings. It is the belief that makes these
communications from the unseen credible, if
they are credible, not vice versa.

There is the path of philosophical specula-
179

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

tion, the path of Plato and his successors, who
have reasoned, and perhaps reasoned well, that
the soul is by its very nature indestructible. But
the metaphysical proof will never lead, will
never at any rate lead the ordinary man very far.
We get further, perhaps, by the path of
simple instinct. There is something in most of
us that naturally revolts against the "cold
obstruction of the tomb." Even a seasoned
agnostic like Huxley acknowledges, "I do not
relish the thought that in 1900 I shall have
ceased to be, as completely as in 1800 I had not
begun to be." But the instinct is not universal;
and in many of those who do possess it, its
potency is strangely variable. Nor does it al
ways point forward to a personal immortality;
with a large section of the human race it takes
the form of a longing for absorption, the merg
ing of all self-identity, in the unconscious depths
of Eternal Being. But granting the existence
and power of the instinct, the question arises
whether it is to be trusted; and that is part of a
larger question. Is life on a rational basis?
Does the Power that has made us what we are,
whatever that Power is, mean something by it,
and is it to be trusted to finish what is has begun?
Is there in human life and history a purpose that
is marching on, and is that purpose wise and
righteous and good? Can we be assured that

180

j

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

whatever would be most blessed and good, were
it true, must therefore ultimately be true?
These questions resolve themselves into one
question — Is there a God? Ordering and per
vading all things, is there the will of a rational,
righteous and loving God?

Wherever the most vivid, operative, fruit
ful faith in personal immortality has been
reached, it has been reached by the path of reli
gious faith and held with the certainty of reli
gious experience. The most striking illustra
tion of this fact, that faith in God, a God
who is almighty and good, holds within it
the assurance of immortality (even if only
in the germ), is found in the religion of the Old
Testament. The gropings and strugglings by
which Hebrew faith advanced from the dreary
belief in the ghost-life of Sheol to the exultant
certainty, "He shall swallow up Death in vic
tory" is the most impressive picture in the spirit
ual history of mankind of the necessity the
human soul is under, in its highest and best
moments, to believe that the present world does
not furnish a satisfying ideal of human life,
nor fulfil the purpose of one who can be fully
trusted and adored as God. At first Israel had
scarcely any ideas about the future, and those
it had it shrank from in horror. But Israel had
God, and that was everything. Its faith in God

181

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

was greater and richer than it knew (as ours,
too, may be greater and richer than we know),
and among its stored-up treasures, which it
needed centuries of the teaching of experience
and the guidance of the Spirit to bring forth,
was the hope of immortality. "Like Bunyan's
pilgrim, the faith of Israel unconsciously car
ried the key of Promise in its bosom even when
it was in the dungeons of Giant Despair."

And so it is still. If the great hope is to be
more than a theological dictum or a comatose
religious tradition, if it is to be a truth that is
quick and powerful, touching experience at
many vital points, influencing the whole outlook
upon life, not an unrealized asset but a true
soul-possession, it is still along this same path
of faith and experience that it must be won.
The hope of personal immortality stands or falls
with faith in a personal God, and the realiza
tion of what that implies.

To believe in God is to believe in the ration
ality of things. And, let it be said once more,
if life leads only to death, and the whole stream
of human history, carrying in it the life-blood
of all the generations, vanishes at last in the abyss
of final nothingness, it is most like an idiot's
tale, "full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing." But this pessimistic conclusion we
cannot seriously entertain. We cannot soberly

182

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

believe that we ourselves are a product of irra
tionality, and that this world in which we live
is the result of accident. There is too much
good in it for that, too much wisdom, beauty
and goodness, too much happiness and love.
But if we are sure that this is God's world, that
it has emanated from a Being who is wise, and
just and good, we must be equally sure that it
is not God's best world — there is too much evil
in it for that, too much that is imperfect, dis
cordant, disappointing.

When we contemplate our own nature we
find that we are made with capacities to which
the present life never has been and never can be
adequate. Such is our capacity for happiness.
To the most fortunate in circumstances, to the
most fervent in piety, there come dreams of a
happiness beyond anything that has been or ever
will be experienced in this life. There is in
us a capacity for truth which points beyond
the limits of our present state. The quest for
truth has been laid upon us, we know not how;
and the further we advance in this quest the fur
ther off does the goal appear. Those who know
most know best that here they have but touched
the fringes of knowledge; and there is in us all
an instinct which rises up to welcome the assur
ance that many things we know not now, we shall
know hereafter. Deeper still, there is in us

183

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

an inextinguishable capacity for goodness. If
we know that we are capable of being far hap
pier and wiser, we are still more conscious that
we are capable of being far better than we are
or are ever likely to be in this life; for, again, it
is those who have advanced furthest in the pur
suit of goodness who also see the greatest dis
tances still to be traversed, and to the very end
are forgetting the things behind and reaching
forth to those that are before. There is in us
a capacity for service which this life never
exhausts; "The petty done, the undone vast,"
is still the cry of our struggling, aspiring human
ity; and it is not easily conceivable that the vast
powers for service personalized in a Paul, a
Luther or a Lincoln are forever dissipated
because a heart ceases to beat. There is a con
tent in such personalities that is never fully
expressed in their work. If life is on a rational
basis the words, "Faithful in a few things,"
demand the sequel, "be thou lord over many
things." And love stretches out both hands
across the gulf of death. If revolts against the
suggestion that all we have learned and suffered
and meant for others, and all that others have
learned and suffered and meant for us, is sud
denly to be ended by the guillotine of death. To
know that every hour that binds us more closely
to each other, that makes us more fit to love and

184

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

be loved, is only a step towards love's extinction,
would rob us of any belief that the scheme of
things in which our lives are set is to be trusted.
To suppose that we are endowed with such
capacities for happiness, for goodness and knowl
edge and service and love, and that when these
capacities have been partially developed and
we have learned a little how to live and have
acquired some fitness for a place in God's uni
verse — to suppose that just then we die and there
is an end of us, is to suppose that God, if there
is a God, takes the rough ore out of the mine,
smelts it and changes it into fine steel, forges
it into weapons for His use, tempers and polishes
them, and then one day, in His caprice, breaks
them in pieces and scatters their fragments to the
void. "What profit is there in my blood, when
I go down to the pit?" The Psalmist's ques
tion goes to the root of the matter. To believe
in God is to trust the rationality of life, and to
trust the rationality of life is to believe in the life
to come. When the death of a British officer,
killed in action, was announced to a brother-
officer who had been long his friend: "—
dead!" he exclaimed. "It'll take more than
that to stop him. He'll carry on." It will take
more than that to stop the career of any faith
ful life. We shall have the "glory of going on."
And to believe in God is to believe that
185

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

there is an ultimate righteousness in things, that
there is a moral order, a conscience in the uni
verse, which distinguishes between right and
wrong, and reacts upon the right-doer and the
wrong-doer, according to their character. It is
said by critics of the doctrine of personal im
mortality that the important thing is, not that we
should survive, but that the things we care for
shall survive, that these are valued in the uni
verse on the whole as they are by us. But one of
the things we thus care for is justice. A universe
without justice would be an irrational universe;
a radically unjust universe would be an infinite
crime. We have a deep conviction that the
ground-law of the universe ought to be such as
will vindicate the right and everyone who is
faithful to it; and by equal necessity redress the
wrong and meet the arrogant and impenitent
wrongdoer with the full force of its antagonism.
But certainly this conviction is never fully
justified in the present world. If it is
true, as doubtless it is, that "history has
a nemesis for every crime," in probably a
majority of cases, it is not upon the per
petrator of the crime that its nemesis falls. If
it is true that "the history of the world is the
judgment of the world," it is a text on which
it is often possible to preach that "might is
right" as plausibly as that "right is might." The

186

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

moral order demands another stage than that of
this world for its full development. If Christ
and Herod, Paul and Nero; if the criminals
who have brought this cataclysm of war upon
the world — if they and their helpless victims
and their heroic resisters drop through the trap
door of death into the same unawakening sleep,
if any man can shuffle out of the consequences
of his deeds simply by dying, as all men must,
existence is built on no principle of righteous
ness. The sufferings of innocence, the frequent
impunity of wrong, callous selfishness flourish
ing, love trampled upon and crucified — Dives
eating the fat and drinking the sweet, Lazarus
rotting at his gate — these are facts of this life,
and if the Power who conducts the world is to
be called righteous, there must be other facts
beyond. The criticism, that this belief in the
ultimate righteousness of things means on the
one hand a desire to be paid for doing our duty,
and on the other hand a thirst for vengeance, is
merely unintelligent. To say that men are
responsible, if it means anything, means that they
must somehow, somewhere, somewhen respond.
There must come a time when in the light of
truth the hidden shall be made open, and the
open revealed in its true colors, and all false
hood and self-deception wither away. This is
as necessary for the wrong-doer as for the

187

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

righteous; and without it life would, morally,
lead to no conclusion at all.

But for those who accept the revelation of
God in Christ, there is yet firmer ground. To
believe in God is to believe not only in rational
ity and righteousness, it is to believe in a perfect
and eternal Love at the heart of life. It is to
believe in a love that is more than benevolence,
a love that sets its desire upon each of us by him
self and for himself, that is afflicted in our afflic
tions, wronged in our wrongs, wounded and
grieved by our sins, that has gone to
the Cross for us and sought us through
the gates of Death and Hell. We are not
ripples on the surface of an oceanic Abso
lute. We are not tools of a Great Artificer to
be used until blunted and worn out, then flung
aside. We are not God's workmen whom He
may calmly bury, relay after relay, provided
that the work goes on. We are his children
holding each a place in His love which no sub
stitute can ever occupy, to whom He has bound
Himself with ties which not even sin, much less
time, can srever. If we believe in God by Jesus
Christ, if to our souls the Love of God which
is in Him shines in its own light as the Supreme
Reality, we are on the surest foundation as
regards the life to come. We need no spiritual
istic manifestations, no far-fetched metaphysical

188

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

reasonings. In Christ we have found God, a
God whom frail, mortal and sinful as we are,
we can trust, trust for ourselves, for those whom
we love and for all men ; trust for to-day and for
to-morrow, for the great step into the unseen and
for what lies beyond it, knowing that whatever
unimaginable changes may be in store for mor
tals there, all of blessed and good each is capable
of receiving He will ever bestow.

189

XIII.
OUT OF WEAKNESS MADE STRONG

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a
ruler of the Jews. — John Hi: 1.

Nicodemus saith unto them (he that came to Jesus by night,
being one of them). — John vii: 50-

And there came also Nicodemus, which at first came to Jesus
by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an
hundred pound weight. — John xix: 39.

rTl HE story of Nicodemus is intended to illu-
*• strate what is one of the favorite themes of
St. John's Gospel, the growth of faith. It is
the story of a man who under the influence of
Christ advances from timidity to courage ; from
weakness and indecision to moral strength.

It was the Passover season, and Jesus had
signalized his visit to Jerusalem by expelling
from the temple courts those who had turned
the House of Prayer into a place of noisy and
greedy traffic. This assertion of authority stung
the official classes to keen resentment; but, on
the other hand, it was followed up by a series
of miracles which produced a deep impression
on the popular mind. And when Nicodemus

This sermon was the last work of the late Professor Law.
The manuscript was completed, but the sermon was never preach
ed. On the Sunday when he was to have delivered it in Old St.
Andrew's, Toronto, he was taken ill, and in a few days called
to higher service.

191

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

found himself caught between these two currents
of opinion he did the one right, wise thing
there was for him to do. He resolved to enquire
into the matter personally. And he went to the
right source for enlightenment, — to our Lord
Himself.

I. Thus we find Nicodemus as the cautious
enquirer. Very cautious. It is characteristic
that Nicodemus, seeking light, seeks it in the
dark. Full of an anxiety he was unable to
repress, yet was unwilling to reveal; unable to
relieve his conscience, yet afraid to imperil his
reputation ; anxious at once to relieve his doubts
and to preserve his dignity — one soft April
night, when the city was asleep, he stole out of
his house alone. Hurrying along the silent
street he made his way to the lodging where he
knew Jesus was.

And Jesus was meek and lowly of heart. He
did not resent the clandestine visit. Though the
soul of the man with his little snobbish fears
and subterfuges was an open book to Him, He
did not shut the door in his face. He did not
say, "If you want to speak with me, you will
find me in the temple courts to-morrow morn
ing." When Nicodemus timidly knocked at
the door, he found Jesus at home. Jesus is
always at home to a soul who longs to speak to
Him.

192

OUT OF WEAKNESS MADE STRONG

Then Nicodemus diplomatically begins:
"Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher sent
from God: for no man can do these miracles
which. Thou doest except God be with him."
Of so much he was assured. At this point of
certainty he had arrived. Jesus was a teacher
sent from God. But it was not to tell Jesus
this he had stolen out under the cover of night.
And reading at a glance the great unspoken
question in the man's heart, Jesus went straight
to the centre of things— the Kingdom of God.
"What you long to know," Jesus says in effect,
"is this: Am I the Messiah? Am I here to set
up the kingdom of God on earth? But there is
another question that comes before that, a ques
tion about yourself. Are you fitted to enter this
kingdom of God of which you dream? Are
you ready to believe it, if it should come? Have
you even any true notion of what the kingdom
of God is? You have not. You could not
recognize it if it were before you. You are
dreaming of a political Messiah — a victorious
king who is to deliver Israel from the Romans
and set up the fallen throne of David. No,
Nicodemus, you have been attracted to me by
my miracles which is just as if you had been
attracted to me by the dress I wear. You have
no knowledge and no sympathy with my aims;
no notion at all of the true Kingdom of God

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which is the rule of the Father's Spirit in the
souls of men, of the Father's will in the lives of
men. My kingdom is beyond your range of
vision. And I tell you, master in Israel though
you are, that even to recognize that kingdom,
much more to enter it and belong to it, you must
be born again. Except a man be born of water
and of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom
of God."

These words of our Lord to Nicodemus have
been regarded as very mystical and mysterious.
But I do not think that their meaning and their
demand would be wrapped in any mystery for
Nicodemus. "Born of water and the Spirit."
That was just what John the Baptist had been
thundering in the ears of all Judea. The King
dom of Heaven was at hand, and he who would
prepare for its coming must repent of his sins
and forsake his evil ways and in token of his
repentance must come down and be baptized in
the Jordan. He must be born of water, and then
would he be ready to welcome that Greater One
who should baptize with the Spirit. And had
not Nicodemus been one of the deputation from
the Sanhedrin who were sent down to the Jordan
to report upon John and his mission; had not
his conscience been smitten by John's message;
had he not trembled upon the brink of John's
baptism? If only he had had the courage

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OUT OF WEAKNESS MADE STRONG

before his brother magistrates to confess his sins
and mingle with the crowd of penitent repro
bates who went down into the river with the
stain of their evil past upon them and came up
out of the river like Naaman, cleansed, as it
born again! Had he only been honest enough
and brave enough he would have done this, and
to-day we would have been counting up Peter,
James, John, Nicodemus, as apostles of tht
Lamb. He was within one short step of the
gate of the Kingdom at the Jordan; but he was
not equal to facing such a loss of reputation and
other things, as would have befallen him on the
day he was publicly baptized. Nicodemus had
not the strength of mind and heart to take up
his cross, be born again. And so he went back
to Jerusalem, retained his seat in the Council,
and now comes by night to enquire about the
Kingdom.

But Jesus, gentle and sympathetic as He was,
could not make the gate of the Kingdom out
inch wider than the stern Forerunner had done.
Nicodemus had scarcely got his lips opened to
pay his prepared compliments to our Lord when
he was again met with that dreadful "waref"
which had haunted him like an accusing spirit
ever since he had not gone down into it. "John
told you what to do," Christ says to him, "and
you would not do it; but I tell you that to the

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day of your death and judgment there will be
no other way to a new heart and new life for you
than to do as your conscience bids you and con
fess your sins and be baptized of John before
all Judea and Jerusalem." And that night, as
Jesus shook hands with Nicodemus, letting him
out into the night from which he had come, He
said with a new and true accent he never for
got, "He that doeth truth cometh to the light
that his deeds may be manifest that they are
wrought in God." But Nicodemus crept back
to his home and did not come to the light and
in sleepless hours of remorse kept his wounded
conscience, his place in the Sanhedrin, and
his repute among men.

How much such men as Nicodemus lose!
They lose all peace. They lose all self-respect.
They have always an unquiet heart. To have
peace one of two things is necessary. You must
have no conscience; or you must have a con
science strong enough to rule you. The man
who has a conscience, and yet not conscience
enough to make itself obeyed, who has convic
tions but is afraid to let them govern him, who
feels his need of God yet cannot bring himself
to full surrender is one of the unhappiest of men.
The most unenviable man in the Sanhedrin was
Nicodemus, the halting and unresolved man.
One pities men and women who are robbed of

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OUT OF WEAKNESS MADE STRONG

the joy and gladness of youth ; one commiserates
still more those who make nothing of their later
years and pass to their graves without tasting the
good of life. But still more to be lamented
is he who stands looking wistfully into the King
dom of Heaven; who passes its gates time and
again ; catches the floating echoes of its music,
feels angels' hands upon him urging him to come
in, and yet has never entered. To be within
sight of land and yet to remain on the rolling
waves; to approach so near to all that for which
we are made and yet to miss it, not accidentally
but from lack of courage — that is the tragedy
of Nicodemus and of many another. "Oh, the
little more and how much it is ; and the little less
and what worlds away!"

II. A first opportunity may be lost. But
God always rejoices to give a man another. And
he gave another opportunity to Nicodemus.
Nicodemus remained a member of the Sanhe-
drin. And what a torture that must have been
to him— to sit there day by day and listen to all
their outpourings of malignant hate against
Jesus Christ, a privy to all the intrigues which
Caiaphas and his fellows wove around Jesus
and the snares they laid for Him, — to sit there
and witness all that and take part in all that day
by day, while in his soul he knew that Jesus
was true and good — to feel his soul burning with

197

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

protest, aching to speak out while yet he kept
silence — how he must have writhed under his
misery and cursed his craven weakness.

One day it passed endurance. The Council
were mad with hatred against Jesus. They had
sent out their officers to arrest Him. After a
time the men return without their prisoner. In
reply to angry demands for explanation, they
can only say, "Never man spake like this man."
And when the exasperated rulers browbeat the
men, crying, "Are ye also deceived?" Nico-
demus, stimulated by the example of the very
constables, finds his voice. "Doth our law judge
any man before it hear him and know what he
doeth?" It was a lame and impotent protest,
feeble as a child's cry flung out against a storm.
The Council contemptuously crushed it under
foot. One scarcely knows how to characterize
the part Nicodemus plays here. He makes an
effort to be true and brave. If he does not make
a stand, he, at any rate, puts in a word for fair
play and justice. He so far braves the wrath
of the Council. He almost confesses Christ in
the presence of His enemies. But only almost.
He is still keeping under cover. He is careful
not to associate himself with the cause of Christ.
He only rises to a point of order, as we say,
takes refuge under a general principle of equity.
He is in the unhappy position of the man who

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OUT OF WEAKNESS MADE STRONG

says either too much or too little. Thereafter
he is a marked man in the Council, a suspected
traitor to his party. Yet he has won no triumph
for the soul. In his conscience there is no "well
done." It accuses him as a failure and a coward.
And he goes down to his home with deepened
remorse. If he had not wholly lost, he had not
fully grasped his second opportunity.

III. But God always rejoices to give a man
still another opportunity and He did to Nico
demus. Nicodemus seized it. The undecided
man, the cautious enquirer, the almost confes
sor, receives a baptism of strength and courage
at the cross. Not till then. He still clings to
his seat in the Council — still as the associate of
Annas and Caiaphas, who are pushing their
battle against Jesus and pursuing Him to the
death. Did he take part in the final acts?
When Caiaphas openly proclaimed his inten
tion of putting an end, once and for all, to the
career of this mischief-maker, when the compact
was made with Judas, when Jesus was led bound
before the Council, and they brought on their
hired perjurers to swear away his life? Let us
suppose that Nicodemus found it convenient to
be absent from these sittings of the Council.
Without protest of his, at least, the deed is done.
Jesus is crucified. Nicodemus had soothed his
conscience; had buoyed himself on the assur-

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OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

ance that matters could never go to this tragical
length. Providence would open up some way
of escape. But the dark deed is done. No
undoing it. No protesting against it now. What
pangs of shame would now be his. "What a
coward I have been : the meanest, the wicked
est of men."

Was there no hope, no possibility even yet of
rescuing something from the wreck of his life?
No little deed by which he might even yet say,
"Jesus, I love Thee. I have heard Thee slan
dered on every side, and, God judging me, I
have listened to the slander and acted as if I
believed it. I have seen Thee persecuted and
forsaken and have stood by in guilty silence.
Cannot I, even yet, do something for the honor
of Thy name?"

It was granted to him. Nicodemus had lost
his great opportunities irreparably — had lost
the privilege of companying with Jesus, of
listening to His words and being trained by
His discipline. Nicodemus might have been an
apostle — a pillar of the Church, a man mighty
in word and deed for the Gospel's sake. All
that honor and gladness and usefulness Nico
demus lost beyond recovery. In the after-writ
ing he passes entirely out of sight. But this is
recorded, this one significant thing. Had it not
been for Nicodemus and another timid friend

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OUT OF WEAKNESS MADE STRONG

to the truth, the dead Body of our Lord might
have been taken down from the cross and cast
into the valley of Hinnom along with the car
casses of the two thieves. But Joseph of
Arimathaea and Nicodemus went boldly to
Pilate and besought him to let them bury the
dead, martyred Body that all other men had
hid their faces from that day. And Joseph of
Arimathaea and Nicodemus took the Body of
Jesus and wound it in linen clothes with the
spices as the manner of the Jews is to bury.

Are not the ways of men and the ways of God
with men strange? Who will bury the dead
Jesus? There is Lazarus whom He raised from
the dead ; there are the lepers he cured ; the hun
gry multitudes He fed; those whose tears He
wiped away — hundreds of them. Are there not
half a dozen of them who will take down that
dear body and lay it in some kind of grave and
shed some tears over it? Not one!

Ah well; there are the people, the enthu
siastic, interested crowd who but yesterday were
crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David." Will
they not go to-day and form themselves into a
great funeral procession and carry their dead
master with dramatic loyalty to His grave? No,
not they!

Then what of Peter, the man who had wit
nessed the great confession, "Thou art the

201

OPTIMISM AND OTHER SERMONS

Christ, the Son of the living God?" He is the
man to bury Christ. But Peter and his followers
have gone into hiding.

Now, who came forward? Who at the last
moment show themselves loyal. It was this same
Joseph of Arimathaea who had been a disciple,
but secretly for fear of the Jews, and this same
Nicodemus who at first came to Jesus by night.
And what had transformed these men? What
was it that brought them to the point when
others had fallen back; when disaster had come,
and shame and ruin, and the cause seemed lost?
The Cross of Christ. Such is its power. "It
makes the coward spirit brave, and nerves the
feeble arm for fight."

Death is a great revealer. The night brings
out the stars; the depth of the root is known in
the act of tearing it up. And Nicodemus never
knew how much he loved Jesus until he was
crucified and dead. The Cross was for Nico
demus the altar of decision. It kindled in his
heart a fire that burned out all timidity and
doubt. Until this time of terror Nicodemus hid
himself. Now the very terror wakes up love
and makes faith dauntless. Surely Nicodemus
is now born again — safely in the Kingdom by
that only door of entrance — being born again.

Let us sum up in a word the lessons we have
learned from this study. First, the prime need

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of courage. It was from the lack of courage
that Nicodemus went so near to losing his soul.
And without courage none of us can be saved.
No longer may we need courage to subdue king
doms, stop the mouths of lions and quench the
violence of fire. But we cannot very long steer
a straight course, the course of loyalty to our
selves and to our God, without the same kind of
courage. We may have convictions, but they
will be only our burden, our condemnation
unless we have the courage of them. Convic
tions, high ideals, good impulses avail nothing
without courage. "Add to your faith courage."
And the second is that the supreme inspira
tion of courage is the Cross of Christ. It is with
the Cross of Jesus going on before that God's
soldiers must always march. It is so they
always have marched to victory. It is the Cross
of Christ that has led on the noble army of
martyrs; and whenever courage like theirs has
been displayed in the service of Christ, it is His
Cross, His supreme sacrifice, His faithfulness
unto death, that has begotten it. Mindful of
"the Son of God who loved me and gave Him
self for me," never shall we falter in courage.
For Christ is not only there before us as a pat
tern, He is here within us as a power. We in
Him and He in us, we may be strong in the
Lord and in the power of His might.

203

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